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You will doubtless want a reference for the 66% figure being wrong, even though you could just google it and the first result would be what you are asking for. I'm not getting into that game.

Yes, I generally expect people to provide citations when they make explicit claims, or to do so when asked, especially when claiming somebody else is factually wrong. That's not a "game", that's basic protocol in logical debate.

However, I noticed that the Rebel article does not have a citation, so I went looking for myself. Presumably the article you're think of is this one, where it says:

"I emailed Prof Khosrovkhavar, who rejects the 70% figure altogether and says that he reckons a true figure is 'around half' - 40%-50%. But (he stressed) these are just estimates, because the French government does not record these things.

The closest thing to an official figure is the number of French inmates who registered for Ramadan -- 18,300 out of a total prison population of 67,700, or 27%, back in 2013 according to Agence France Presse. Prof Khosrovkhavar suggests that this could be an underestimate, because some Muslims will fear being 'noted' by the intelligence services. A Brookings Institution report says that "Muslims are greatly overrepresented in prisons and within the eighteen- to twenty-four--year-old age group in particular: they make up only 8.5 percent of that age cohort in France, yet 39.9 percent of all prisoners in the cohort." Nobody seems to know for sure.

This, obviously, is not to suggest that France doesn't have a serious problem with integrating Muslim men (in England and Wales, 15% of the prison population is Muslim from a total population of 5%). But the enormous 70% figure is false, and should not be used â" no matter how many reputable-seeming outlets have been taken in by it."

And so the premise of the Rebel article is still valid:

"If you only listen to the liberal media, you're most likely under the impression that there are no problems with Muslim immigration in Europe. However, I'd argue that one of the biggest problems in Europe is immigration, especially from Africa and the Middle East."

Yes, myself. Of course, it's impossible to prove a negative in any general sense.

Your description of the Rebel was over the top. You said they think, "all Muslims living in the west are a problem". They have valid concerns with Islam. You seek to dismiss them without addressing them.

And as I also said, ignore the idiots who bandy that word around, they can't change what it really means.

Like who, the SPLC, an organization with a lot of sway in mainstream circles? There is no serious critique of Islam that isn't labeled an "Islamphobe" by mainstream people who aren't considered "idiots". It's a thoughtless term invented to precisely shut down criticism of Islam.

FYI people didn't work 12-16 hours on a farm on a regular basis, the industrial revolution made people work longer hours than before.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ma...

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog...

The ECHI pointed out that 'Bismarck beats Beveridge". I.e. systems based on compulsory purchase of individual insurance from a market of competing suppliers like the ones in Germany and the Netherlands beats single payer.

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog...

The Euro Health Consumer Index (ECHI) 2009 was released this week, and got lots of media coverage in the UK because it ranked the NHS 14th out of 33 countries and said the British health service was let down by waiting lists and "uneven quality performance". Only 4 counties in the EU15 (Western Europe, roughly speaking) got lower scores - Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal.

The report is full of interesting information, but one point (on p9) particularly interested me. In their words, "Bismarck Beats Beveridge - yet again!" To explain:

Bismarck healthcare systems are "based on social insurance, where there is a multitude of insurance organizations... who are organisationally independent of healthcare providers." They are named after Otto von Bismarck, who founded the German welfare state.

Beveridge systems are "systems where financing and provision are handled within one organisational system, i.e. financing bodies and providers are wholly or partially within one organization." They are named after Wiliam Beveridge, who founded the British welfare state.

Anyway, the point the reports makes is that, "Looking at the results of the EHCI 2006 - 2009, it is very hard to avoid noticing that the top consists of dedicated Bismarck countries, with the small-population and therefore more easily managed Beveridge systems of the Nordic countries squeezing in. Large Beveridge systems seem to have difficulties at attaining really excellent levels of customer value."

The following list shows the rankings of Western European healthcare systems according to their 2009 score. The Bismarck countries are in bold:

(1) Holland, (2) Denmark, (3) Iceland, (4) Austria, (5) Switzerland, (6) Germany, (7) France, (8) Sweden, (9) Luxembourg, (10) Norway, (11) Belgium, (12) Finland, (13) Ireland, (14) UK, (15) Italy, (16) Spain, (17) Greece, (18) Portugal.

Clearly there is something in what the authors of the ECHI say. They suggest two points which could explain the comparative underperformance of Beveridge systems:

(1) Managing organizations of this size (the NHS employees 1.5m staff) requires management skills which just don't exist in the public sector. (I'd say they are extremely rare in the private sector too.)

(2) The primary loyalty in Beveridge organizations tends to be to politicians and other top decision-makers, rather than patients.

Adopting a competitive social insurance system like Holland's would be a huge step forward for the UK, even if - in an ideal world - I would prefer something based on medical savings accounts. You can read more about it here, in our excellent 2002 report

Honestly, your position is as absurd to me as mine is to you

Your position isn't absurd to me at all. I know pretty much what you believe and why you believe it because I used to believe it myself. That's also how I know that it is wrong.

We are going to have to work backward to find which of us has a flawed axiom.

I have stated my axioms: they are those of classical liberalism, aka libertarianism in the US. You obviously don't understand them since you keep making assertions that aren't true. The only thing that needs "debugging" here is your understanding of what classical liberalism is, and you will have to do that by reading some books about it instead of fabricating statements out of thin air. Boaz "The Libertarian Mind" is a good introduction. You can find more reading here and here.

http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/...

You may also have heard of it as "negative income tax".

And saying that Adam Smith was not hugely fundamental to modern libertarianism is extremely ignorant. He is consistently brought up in arguments put forth by libertarians, along with Friedman, Mises et. al.

1) let's first note first that Adam Smith's observations on 'the evident justice and utility' of inheritance taxes were made in a time when there WAS NO INCOME TAX. Certainly not the confiscatory levels it is today.

2) after he muses about how children might therefore tolerate some tax once they've moved out of their parents' home, he opines: "There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people" - hardly a ringing endorsement of the necessity of impoverishing children of their parents' accumulated wealth

Finally, From the Adam Smith Institute itself:
3) http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/...

Inheritance Tax is taxing money that has already been taxed when it was earned. The provision parents worked to make for their children, paying tax as they did so, is now taxed again, removing part of their incentive to create wealth in the process. For many recipients, the bequest comes as a lump sum when they are already established and probably own their home. It is thus available for investment or to start a business. Taxing it greatly reduces these possibilities. The capital pools built up by a family business such as a shop, for example, can be dissipated on death by Inheritance Tax, with a consequent economic loss to society, a loss that impacts employees and customers.

Your historical analysis is way off. Here, for instance, is what one writer says about Medieval Europe:

Plowing and harvesting were backbreaking toil, but the [medieval] peasant enjoyed anywhere from eight weeks to half the year off. The Church, mindful of how to keep a population from rebelling, enforced frequent mandatory holidays. Weddings, wakes and births might mean a week off quaffing ale to celebrate, and when wandering jugglers or sporting events came to town, the peasant expected time off for entertainment. There were labor-free Sundays, and when the plowing and harvesting seasons were over, the peasant got time to rest, too. In fact, economist Juliet Shor found that during periods of particularly high wages, such as 14th-century England, peasants might put in no more than 150 days a year.

Interesting - but a Reuters news story does not a meaningful historical analysis make. Here is a good counterpoint to this (very misleading) thesis.

OTOH, it is well established that (from actual observation) surviving hunter-gatherer societies have more leisure time. This is partly due to the lack of a compulsion to "make stuff" (maintain a more complex dwelling, clothing, tool requirements, etc.).

Give a time frame for "just end" that would not put the whole world back into the stone age? The #1 cause of pollution (or carbon de-sequestration for you pointy types) is poverty. http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/...
Just think about how it will be if you are drinking your starbucks that was heated by burning cow dung...

Another quote from the article:

in no sense can they be called subsidies—i.e., money taken from Smith and given to Jones. The failure to tax Exxon more does not increase your payment to the IRS by one red cent.

This passage is perfectly defensible.
If there is a deficit, the-failure-to-tax-Exxon-more has the short-term effect of increasing the deficit.
If there is a surplus, the-failure-to-tax-Exxon-more has the short-term effect of decreasing the surplus.
(The long-term effect, of course, depends on whether we sit on the inhumane side of the Laffer Curve.)
But what the-failure-to-tax-Exxon-more does not do is increase your tax rate. Only a literal act of Congress can do that.
(No, I'm not advocating deficit spending. One does not have to advocate deficit spending to defend the correctness of this passage from the article.)

Imagine an outrageously oppressive income tax rate: 99.9% of your income is being confiscated. Then imagine that you get a slight tax break, reducing your rate to 99.8%. By your definition, you have just gotten a subsidy.

Here's an example of an entity that receives a true subsidy: Amtrak. In all its years of existence, Amtrak's revenue has never been sufficient to cover its expenses. The only reason it can carry on is that the shortfall is covered by a subsidy. Amtrak has never paid tax -- which makes sense, given that it has never had a profit, and only profits are subject to tax.

If you are going to claim that "a tax reduction is the same thing as a subsidy," you must conversely also claim that "a subsidy reduction is the same thing as a tax." Do you really want to go there? If words are to mean anything, I should hope not. Amtrak's subsidy has generally increased quite a bit over the years -- from $601 million in FY1986 to $1,555 million in FY2010 -- but it dropped to $1,475 million in FY2011. Does that reduction mean Amtrak has paid tax? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. And profitable oil companies have been subsidized to the exact same extent that Amtrak has been taxed -- which is to say, not at all. Your assertion to the contrary seems to be purely for political purposes; i.e., it's doublespeak. Was is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, and Tax Reductions are Subsidies. Big Brother is beaming at this new addition to the doublespeak lexicon.

More doublespeak.

If a government confiscates a smaller fraction of a person's earnings, the government did not "give" money to that person. It was never the government's to give; 100% of it belonged to the person until the moment when taxes were rendered. It's just scary how many people have begun to think of all assets as belonging to the government, and that we should be grateful for whatever fraction the government "allows" us to keep.

If words are to mean anything, government "giving" should be reserved for situations where a person receives some benefit without having paid for it. NOT for a mere adjustment in the rate at which privately-owned assets are confiscated.

Confiscating fewer privately-owned assets only increases the deficit if the government is already living beyond its means. In 1998 - 2001 there were four consecutive years of surpluses. If fewer private assets had been confiscated during those years, the short-term effect would have been a smaller surplus, not a larger deficit. (And the long-term effect depends on whether we sit on the inhumane side of the Laffer Curve.)

free market fundamentalism fails because it believes selfishness trumps all.

Another misinformed poster. Not one free marketer I know of believe that at all. Try to find "selfishness" in wiki's Free market article. The father of free markets was Adam Smith and he definitely didn't. Beside writing "Wealth of Nations" he also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. One description says "Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.." His invisible hand is the conjunction of "the forces of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand". Also he says of the invisible hand:
"The rich consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for".
Dispite what people say or believe today's poor in the US have better lives than the poor a century ago.

why give back to the society that made my riches possible

Yea, why did Rockefeller, Hughes, Vanderbilt, and so many other wealthy people leave fortunes to non-profits or set up foundations that financially support non-profits they like? Bill and Melisa Gates are leaving their wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Warren Buffett has pledged to donate to the foundation "approximately 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares spread over multiple years through annual contributions, worth approximately US$30 billion in 2006." George Soros uses his wealth to fund his Open Society Institute. Its aim is to "to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform." Business tycoon Armand Hammer was friends with both Vladimir Lenin and Ronald Reagan.

the truth of course, is balance: capitalism with social safety nets. but some asshole believe that just modest social safety nets is some unstoppable slippery slope into north korea style communism.

The truth is that the

In the UK the tax take isn't particularly high now either. In fact it's lower than at any time under Thatcher for example.
http://www.adamsmith.org/a-history-of-tax-freedom-day/

And the same empty threat of rich people leaving if overtaxed applies here too. It's rather reminiscent of the dire predictions that the National Minimum Wage would cause mass bankruptcies in some industries, and widespread unemployment. It did nothing of the kind. A decade later it was city bankers that fucked up the economy and caused those effects.

Ford wanted his workers to have a living wage, to be able to afford the products they made.

That may be the public messaging/myth, but closer analysis shows that Ford simply wanted to reduce turnover, and also to increase productivity by linking the wage increase to learning English, as well as their steering clear of alcohol and gambling (monitored in workers homes, no less...)

Moreover, Ford did not employ enough workers for their wage hike to have a significant impact on his own sales.

That said, wages in China are rising, cutting Flextronics' profits and forcing Foxconn to move more factories away from the high-cost coastal areas of China.

Foxconn doubled base-wages for employees in Shenzhen in June, where it has around half its 900,000 workers, but said it would cut the headcount there by about 170,000 over five years.

Where consumers in the US have a wide range of drugs available to them European consumers are far more restricted in their choice. Although countries with nationalised health services believe that their healthcare systems prioritise the interest of citizens, HTA is in fact used as a precursor to supply-side restrictions on pricing and reimbursement.

Here are some other good articles:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/02/Comparative-Effectiveness-in-Health-Care-Reform-Lessons-from-Abroad#_ftn32
http://www.adamsmith.org/publications/health/funding-uk-healthcare/
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/hpcgSystems.pdf

I say, the system encourages it, even if not strictly required by law. We have a system that is predicated on the idea that humans are selfish creatures

Ah but even Adam Smith said the best way to improve everyone's life was by people pursuing their own self interests. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages." Quote from The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II, p. 456, para. 9..

Falcon

Because, like it or not, the health of the economy doesn't directly hinge on your ability to comfortably pay back your student loans.

Unless you take into account the millions of others like him. That kind of distributed bail-out is better than the bank bail-out, because the bank bail-out supports a business model proven to have failed and is used to increase the banks capital holdings (as the government has demanded) and never re-enters the economy. The extra money printed does drive up inflation and reduce investor confidence (see the hammering sterling has taken since Broon's glorious bailout).

A distributed bailout among grass-roots consumers is more likely to encourage profitable innovation and will re-enter society immediately.

Basically, the government fucked up and let these companies get too big to fail while turning a blind eye to their shenanigans. And now they're forced to bail them out.

Don't forget the forced loans to people who couldn't afford them. Your government did its best to drag the banks under, whether it realised it or not at the time.

You bitch slapped him with an invisible hand!

At the end of the 6th paragraph

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

This is otherwise referred to as a progressive tax. It's not actually that bad of an idea. Compare to regressive tax.

It is such a good idea that, in fact, John McCain himself advocated for a progressive tax system, back in 2000.

In most states in the US, if a shop goes union, you *must* join the union to work there and you *must* accept the entire collective bargaining agreement, including the tenure-based pay system that severely penalizes anyone who wants to change jobs.

As I said already elsewhere, Maggie Thatcher abolished the Closed shop system here back in the '80s. Forcing anyone to join a union is now illegal in the UK. Indeed she comprehensively destroyed union power in many ways. Here's the first decent article Google found on it.

It's all about what the market will bear.

The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

"Free" Market. I understand. I also actually read Adam Smith, who placed several caveats on his theory that make it an unattainable ideal. Holding primacy among these is the availability of perfect information. (And the unspoken addendum that the volume of perfect information must be evaluable (i.e. instantly having perfect information from the correct context.))

What we have today is, at best, mercantilism. The biggest thing you ignore in your assertion are "barriers to entry", which as any silicon valley executive can tell you are impenetrable when Microsoft is in the market. A startup's best chance for profit in a Microsoft market is for MS to buy them out. This happened lots in the 80's ad 90's, with most of those companies' products and innovations heading straight for the MS dustbin. So, your assertion about others filling the void to keep MS on their toes is wishful thinking. I'm not defending the current occupants of the market: their business models are antiquated and inefficient.

A cash cow by whose standards?
going by market capitalization (a flawed metric, but something.) Adobe who are the market leader in this space are at $23,978.8 Million. Microsoft are at $271,139.2 Million. That's over an order of magnitude in business size. The graphics market at a discount (in order to kill Adobe) from Adobe's pricing is quite small in relative terms. Add to that the trend towards freeish software led by Google and you have a shrinking market in dollars, even if you have a larger user base. It's like the browser wars. It doesn't really matter who wins, because everyone loses economically. Remember Netscape Communications Corp?

By the way, MS never has to sell people on the next version. They just cease support for the version before last and corporate customers adopt the last version. Wash, rinse, repeat. See other discussions regarding their other product lines most notably windows, office, and Visual Studio.

From The Wealth of Nations:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." (Book 1, Chapter 10).

http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/index.php/smith/mor e_about/a_modest_man_named_smith/

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism :

Mercantilist domestic policy was more fragmented than its trade policy. While Adam Smith portrayed mercantilism as supportive of strict controls over the economy, many mercantilists disagreed. The early modern era was one of letters patent and government-imposed monopolies; some mercantilists supported these, but others acknowledged the corruption and inefficiency of such systems. Many mercantilists also realized the inevitable result of quotas and price ceilings were black markets. One notion mercantilists widely agreed upon was the need for economic oppression of the working population; laborers and farmers were to live at the "margins of subsistence". The goal was to maximize production, with no concern for consumption. Extra money, free time, or education for the "lower classes" was seen to inevitably lead to vice and laziness, and would result in harm to the economy.[7]

[The labourer's] employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. [...] The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

I am not speaking against the non-Free market aspects here, just pointing them out. Many seem to have a hard time admitting that goods protected by copyrights and patents are not traded legally in a Free Market. To me, it is a separate question as to whether we think the copyright and patent solution is better than letting the Free Market try and find a solution, but at least people might try to come to grips with it not being a Free Market in those goods.

Niether copyrights nor patents exist in freetrade capitalism. Adam Smith the father of capitalism opposed copyrights and patents. I used to support both copyrights and patents, except business methods and software patents which I oppose, myself however recently I got into a debate on them and now I'm not no sure they are needed anymore.

I have only just started to wonder about corporations and Free Markets. These are early musings on that subject for me.

I've thought about both for a long tyme, and believe in freetrade capitialism as well as holding corporations to the standard of benefitting the common good and holding them responsible. Since I was a teenager I wanted to be an investor and start my own business. Now because of a disability I probably never will have my own business but with the help of my sister I may become an investor, maybe even a trader.

When countries get together to co-operate on prestige economic projects, take cover. Concorde and the Channel Tunnel spring to mind, both excellent pieces of hardware, but financially unsuccessful. The A380 superjumbo is the latest example. Now that UPS has cancelled its order for the freight version, the A380 has no orders at all. Damian Reece in the Telegraph says that if Airbus had been a real company it would have acted earlier to put right the accelerating problems.

Then again, Airbus would never have built the A380 superjumbo in the first place if it had been a market venture, rather than the instrument of a European political elite with great power illusions.

...

Now the arguments rage over restructuring, with politicians circling like jackals with what Reece calls "a mix of toxic national jealousies and bureaucratic paralysis." The prospects seem bleak. The plane will lose billions, and taxpayers will bale out its parent company. I see no prospect at all for improving it; it's structure puts it in the political domain, not the commercial one, and I don't think anything can save it.

Patent monopolies are government granted monopolies and in direct contradiction to the founding principles of the nation. That said without any government intervention at all monopolies are the inevitable conclusion of capitalism. Monopolies in turn provide the wealthy with a safe way to guarantee they only become wealthier. It goes without saying that where there are monopolies there is no competition and therefore no benefit to the consumer.

Capitalism works on the assumption of individual human greed and jealousy as a driving motivator. People sugar coat it by phrasing it differently but that is what is boils down to. Under capitalism the right to accumalate personal wealth regardless of consequence to others is absolute.

This might be true of today's brand of capitalism, however what we have today is more of a corporate aristocracy. With few exceptions true free trade capitalism improves economics for everyone. The father of capitalism, Adam Smith, was even opposed to patents, patents are a government granted monopoly and he was against both government and monopolies. At first Thomas Jefferson was also against patents. However eventually his friend James Madison convinced him that patents could encourage progress by giving inventors and investors the financial incentive to create new things. And despite the fact that many slashdotters work on or contribute to open source projects money is a primary reason people create new stuff. Indirectly this even applies to some who contribute to FOOS projects. By working on, and having your name appear as a contributor, you're displaying your skills to employers, or if you work for yourself or your own business, for potnetial clients.

I don't see why not. We expect other countries to extradite their citizens for breaking US laws. It seems only fair. While in most cases they've broken the law in both countries, that's not always true.

There's probably plenty of you who pay more than that. This year, your Tax Freedom Day falls on June 3 Tax Freedom Day

Tax Amnesty Day is the 3rd of June for 2006

Link 1
Link 2

Don't worry, you've got less than 3 months to go before you've paid off government for 2006!

But you don't think it's dangerous that a site that has a de-facto monopoly on searches is doing this?

Look at it this way. BMW felt that Google was putting them too low on the search list. So they make a page to 'fix' this. Then Google de lists them.

If Google was one of many equally popular search engines, I'd say that they were within their rights to do this. But they aren't. People use 'Google' as a verb, i.e. just f**king Google it. Most of the world uses them as their only search engine. So if I have a site, and I'm way down on the list, I'll try to fix it. Now I could use a different search engine of course, and even lobby other people to do the same. But my customers will still be using Google.

Actually, I do some work on a site with an open source FAT32 formatter. It's pretty popular, I get a 2-3 emails a day with people that have downloaded it, and all of them are satisfied. Now this site is way down on the list with any reasonable search terms, unless you know the name of the company. I actually emailed them, and got a reply IIRC about buying advertising. My solution was to email people who are high up on the pagerank and get them to link to me. And link to it from here, tight bastard that I am ;-)

So suddenly you have a de facto monopoly, and thus pagerank is valuable enough that they can charge for it, and punish people for trying to exploit it. That doesn't sit too well with me. Whatever you think of the people that run Google, in the end it is a business and one that has carved out a rather novel monopoly. And history shows that businesses have a tendency to exploit that in a way that is in their interests, even when their interests diverge from most people's.

The interesting thing is that in America at least, the law says that there are things like tying agreements that are legal unless you are a monopoly (or abusive monopoly, I forget the wording). So Microsoft could insist that you used Internet Explorer with Windows and not break the law, right up to the lawsuit that declared them to be a monopoly at which point it became illegal. But for Google, I don't think there is any legal restraint on them. They could of course claim that they are a not a monopoly, on the grounds that mind share is not market share, and people are still free to use yahoo or altavista. And asking for money to improve pagerank, or delisting people that try to exploit it would probably still be legal even if their competitors managed to get a Microsoft style judgement against them.

You have to remember Adam Smith's quote:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together," he wrote, without concocting "a conspiracy against the public."

I.e. that businesses have zero qualms about creating and abusing monopoly power. It's not about Bill Gates being a bad person, or the Google guys being good ones. It's something that businesses do, if they want to succeed and keep the shareholders happy. And in the Google case, it's a new sort of monopoly, one that won't be restrained by the laws that affected Microsoft, not that those proved particularly effective in any case.

1. You have a free market available to you. If you didn't want a Wintel machine, you could have bought a Mac, or any number of others.

2. The fact you miss is that the Lenova is affordable for you BECAUSE it comes with MSC products installed. You even state your preferred s/w or OS vendors were out of your price range. If you feel screwed, go tell them!

3. Again, there is no law that forces MSC to be on any machine. MSC has never used force or fraud to impose their products upon you. You made the choice. Maybe you should go complain to your preferred s/w or OS vendor and ask them why they can't be as smart as MSC in making their product affordable and available to you?

4. I support your ability to erase and dispose of unwanted products on your machine. And there is no law to prevent you from erasing them at will, and installing what YOU want. That is the free market, the "Unseen Hand" that Adam Smith wrote about in 1776. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-intro.htm
Do you really WANT laws that would mandate the type of software that can, or cannot be marketed?

5. You made the choice to buy a product with full knowledge of it's s/w contents. And now you're complaining about it. Seems to me the problem is with your judgement, not with MSC or anyone else.

I mean no offense in my words, but I hope you learn to appreciate the free market, and the high morality of capitalism.

http://www.objectivistcenter.org/showcontent.aspx? ct=225&h=51

My personal preferred tax system is the Flat Rate system, assuming it's applied properly (ie get rid of exemptions) and to companies, as in use in some Eastern European countries (eg Estonia). In this one you set a flat rate that every one pays, at a level that means overall tax income is the same, but gets rid of thousands of bureaucrats and puts millions of lawyers out of work. One ExxonMobil sized company paying 18% instead of 11% would probably allow everyone's tax bill to drop a couple of percentage points.

No doubt there are problems with it, but a simple system always works better than complex one.

Pure capitalism the way it is turning in the western world, is hurting the futher development of civilization, and will take us back to the jungle eventually, if nothing is being done.

Sorry but we don't have pure capitalism as envisioned by Adam Smith, or Thomas Paine especially as in Adam's book "The Wealth of Nations".

Then you're in favor of adding a "consumption" tax to account for the real cost of products. Add on a tax per pound for garbage, but allow free drop off of recyclables. Add on extra gas taxes. Add on disposal taxes on sale of anything that poses specific problems (e.g. CRTs).

Yeap! I'm very much in favor of a consumption tax (sales tax on nonessential items) and user fees. And pollution taxes. Get rid of income taxes!!! Well except maybe for those who make 100, 1000, or maybe 10,000 tyme what the lowest paid fulltime worker in a business makes. But at least in the USA if government were to follow the limits put on it by the USA Constitution then there wouldn't be this perceived need for high taxes.

The free market won't do it, but those are real costs that a "rational" person would pay (unless it is voluntary, thus allowing freeloaders).

A true free market would do it, however there isn't a true free market. What exists today is the corporate aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of and which Adam Smith and Thomas Paine would of railed against.

Oh, and congratulations to the parent poster for being an actual conservative, rather than the current leading brand of NeoCon. You're a rarity these days. I never thought I'd see the day when Reagan looked like a better alternative to the current primate occupying the Oval.

If you mean by conservative and Reagan as a smaller and limited government then there's two problems. First it wasn't conservatives who stood for small and limited government, in the 1700s it was liberals (classical liberals for some) that wanted this. Three big examples of this Liberalism are Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith or Adam Smith (Institute) , and Thomas Paine (Network) , or TomPaine.common Sense .

Secondly Reagan didn't reduce the overall size of government, under him government bloomed. I don't recall most of it but "Liberty" magazine had an article in one issue with the numbers in dollars on how big some parts of government got and it wasn't just the military that did. The parts I recall are the "War on Drugs" and education but there were others as well.

The municipal governments are doing what they really should be doing, which is serving their residents. You don't see the cities implementing municipal-run ISPs to compete with existing, viable solutions from the cable and telephone companies. The municipal-run ISPs are being constructed precisely because they're filling a gap the big communications corporations are voluntarily leaving.

Municipal governments may be doing that which they should but they better not be using taxpayer money to pay for it. They might issue munis, municipal bonds, to pay for the contruction but then those bonds and operatiing costs should be paid for on a subscription basis, ie those who use it pay for it.

In a free market, if you ignore a market segment, you should not have a legal way to prevent others from coming in and serving it.

Bravo! Just like what Adam Smith would of said in The Wealth of Nations .

The GPL, accessible guilt-free wide-spread piracy, and socialism are all related in that they remove the valuation of a product or service. In socialism, the state controls the value of everything. With the GPL, all work and contribution is on equal footing. No one would argue Linus' contribution is much greater than someone who wrote an obscure kernel driver. Yet Linus receives equal reward (i.e. the Linux kernel code base) as the person who wrote a single driver. Take this concept further to worrying with social concerns, as you argue MS should do, and you have socialism.

There's one big difference b etween the GPL and scoialism, whereas the GPL is freely available to choose to use or choose not to use, socialism has the potential armed use of force by the government to force compliance. Freedom of choice versus threat of violence.

Adam Smith would disagree with you that giving back is better for the society. In a free market, it is the self-interest of capitalists that ultimately enhance society and sustain the free market.

It's been too long since I've read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to recall what he said of giving back to society but I'd say that in some cases it is to a person's self interest to "give back" to society.

What he is talking about is just freedom. Freedom to work and live without domineering forces. I was hoping that some of you free market slashdotters would start to see the light because of the rather obvious case that sits right in front of us all--the monopoly power of cablecos and telcos. Obviously, they are inhibiting the advance of technology through their dominant power.

Monopoly power, which government enables, isn't freedom or the free market. Much as what you say in that socialism doesn't exist, neither does the free market. Instead what we have is a corporate aristocracy. It bares no resemblance to Adam Smyth's capitalism.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson, 1814

I like capitalism. I think it's generally good. But we must realise that it's not the most important pricipal we live by. Cooperation should not be demonized. If we fall for this, we will be the losers.

Here, here !!!
While I believe in capitalism, true free trade capitalism not the Corporate Aristocracy we have now, I also believe in cooperation. Then again, cooperation is part of capitalism as Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations

Communism and Marxism already have failed. There is not one purely communist or Marxist nation left. As for capitalism, it isn't failing us. What is failing is corporatism, the corporate version of capitalism, which is a poor image of Adam Smith's capitalism. Socialism isn't doing much better.

You may be have professional training archive printing to your credit, but your willingness to use logical fallacies in your rhetoric lends one to see it more as a rant. The most glaring fallacy is that of Poisoning the Well. Basicly your statement "if someone declares their inkjets are archival, they have a financial incentive to lie to you" while possibly true, has nothing to do with whether or not pigment based inkjets do or ever will exist. You're simply trying to discredit any opposition before it has a chance. Poisoning the well in this situation doesn't work convincingly because most people infact do believe that pigment based inkjets do exist, rightly or not. The tactic should really be reserved for when you know your position has few supporting points but you and you're audience are agreement that the position should be maintained anyways.

and there was me thinking Kirkcaldy was in Fife.

Einstien was so disturbed by the implications of quantum mechanics he exclaimed: God does not play dice!

Einstein said that because he first believed there were hidden variables, not truly random processes governing the laws of mechanics. Here is more information.

Darwin is on record as stating that while evolution explains the mechanism by which living things develop, there is some guiding force directing it all in the background.

Not sure what you're implying here, but the "guiding force" is not supernatural -- if that is what you mean.

Adam Smith's theories on markets rely on an unseen hand holding everthing together.

Smith's "invisible hand" is a congragate effect of each individual's self-intest. Or, to put it another way: "it is a metaphor for an unintended consequence. There is no hand at all which is why it is invisible."

All three examples you give employ symbolic language. They're not meant to be taken literally but instead to help explain a principle.

Dear Comrade,

I am a cheapskate. I admit it.

I am really pleased when I know that Adam Smith's book "The Wealth Of Nation" is online .

So, is the "Das Kapital" online as well ?

If so, where is it ?

Thank you !

Das Kapital? Free market? In the same breath?

The Wealth of Nations might be a more appropriate work to point to as "the root of much modern economic theory," as opposed to that polemic, "Das Kapital."

Unless you're an unrepentant Marxist, of course.