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Basic microeconomics holds that subsidies reduce the price paid by consumers (the subsidy is split between the producer and the consumer) while increasing amount of goods sold.

Nevermind that your libertarian bretheren will complain that in trying to force the burden ONTO the manufacturers, you are actually *interfering* with the market. Right now, the burden IS on the market. And individuals are disposing of the equipment in the most cost-effective way they know. The trash bin.

Bloop! Externalities! Market failure alert!

Free markets are nice and all, but there are a billion real-world examples where markets are not perfectly efficient, for all sorts of reasons. In these cases, government intervention, though generally a pain in the butt, isn't always a bad thing.

denentures are debt. Michael did not invest in Red Hat in the sense that he bought into the companies long term success. He loaned them money. If they can't pay it back, Michael's $(99.5*10^6) may not be sunk. It might be a secured loan. I'll admit, I did not RTFA carefully enough to know if it is secured or not. Of course if the rate of return is high enough it's unlikely that RHAT won't be around long enough for principal recovery to be gravy on the steak.

My $12K in Novell stock is different. It represents faith in the company as opposed to faith in the company being able to pay me back.

Then again, Michael may be playing off Redhat against Microsoft to get bettr pricing, just like he does with AMD&Intel which could well result in the loan paying off many times over for his company, which he owns a lot of, in short order.

Nowthat Senor dillitante investor has spoken, let's here from some folks who know what they're talking about :-)

The way he pays for everything else ... by cutting taxes, of course!

Let me put it this way: If I pay 65 cent/l for gas (as of this morning), I get 9l to a 100K, then I can see quite clearly that somehow 87cents (no matter how cheap the bulk rate for fuel is) will pay for the transport alone. I would say someone is someone giving money to allow this stuff to be so cheap, no?

Actually my point is that what we pay for our produce at the register is not an accurate reflection of the true costs. There is a lot of hidden costs (e.g. Transportation) that we obviously don't seem to pay for. Having said that, the question would be: Who is paying for that?

If your argument were true, no investors would ever be effected by financial policy change. No stock price would ever change in response to changes in financial policy. But the market very vividly illustrates the opposite.

I would love to explain the mathematics to you myself, but for that I need graphics, so try checking out this page: Indirect Taxes and Subsidies If you don't understand basic economics 101 principles, then you have room to improve your business practices to greater benefit yourself *and* your customers. So I suggest you look into it.

Not in classical economic terms, no. Copyrights allow short term supernormal profits, by which an economic entity may benefit by being first to market. This is right - the creator of an idea is the first to expoit it, and so gains supernormal profits before the market returns to equilibrium. For more about monopolistic profits, see here

The opposition to long copyrights should come by pointing out that it prevents market correction since 'short term' becomes 'infinite term'.

Cheers,
Ian

Strong environmental laws do NOT fit within a capitalist system.

A bold assertion, unmarred by actual facts. Perhaps once you have some, you could come back and address my point.

As a start, try learning about negative externalities, which any market economy needs to address somehow. Any good economics class should address this. Hint: you can't just pretend they don't exist.

Or heck, you could try moving next door to a third-world, coal-fired steel plant and see if you think that a well-educated marketplace is enough to make people buy their steel from other plants. That would give you some facts, too, even if you wouldn't be able to use them for nearly as long.

I'm probbaly not the best person to explain this, but:

Classical theory: is the belief that the markets are perfectly in balance, self-correcting, and nothing should be done to disrupt this equilibrium.

Keynsian Economics: Keynes formulated an alternative, arguing that governments should step in with deficit spending in order to boost the economy in times of recession. The theory came from his observation of the Great Depression. His theory was eventually implemented (the great public works projects in the US) and the depression was brought to an end. He is the only economist to have an entire field of economics named after him -- Keynsein Economics.

Monetarist Theory: The failure of Keysian Economics was the stagflation of the 70s. Friedman stepped in with a Nobel prize winning theory -- Monitarist Theory -- that states that inflation is a monetary problem. he came up with the concept of velocity & acceleration of money, and the idea that you could control the supply of money. This is the basis of interest rate adjustments.

This sketchy outline should lead you to sites on the web that'll give a clearer & more complete explanation than I am capable of. I found this site: The Virtual Economy that looks like a good start.

Full text of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" on Bibliomania.

Short distillation of his life on Licidcafe, along with some linkage.

biz/ed has topics on both Economic Systems and Game Theory which include lots of relevant material.

but i agree with your synopsis. Mr C is screwed.

Full text of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" on Bibliomania.

Short distillation of his life on Licidcafe, along with some linkage.

biz/ed has topics on both Economic Systems and Game Theory which include lots of relevant material.

but i agree with your synopsis. Mr C is screwed.

Well, it is not. It is called a protection of domestic industries. And though it may not seem fair from the RAM consumer point of view there are quite a bit of good reasons to justify such actions. Whether all of those are applicable to this particular case is a matter of a debate. And taking into account govenment actions, someone somewhere probably jumped over the head trying to protect them.

There must be a Laffer Curve for software.

Now, if everything were copyleft (a Free Software advocate's dream) we'd be all the way over to the right of the curve. Likewise, if nobody had ever shared source, achievements in computer science would be very limited. We'd be all the way over to the left of the curve.

As usual, the truth is in the middle. I dislike Copyleft because it has a tendency to push us farther and farther to the right on this graph. Eventually, it may reduce the output of useful code. Despite what FSF advocates say, reducing useful output does *not* enhance freedom.

What we really need are some useful measurements of output and utility in the software industry. Maybe someday we will even be able to establish an optimum ammount of time that should be spent contributing to Open Source. However, it is likely to remain a political issue for the foreseable future--just like taxation.

Whatever happened to capitalism?

Adam Smith. You are, of course, aware that the founder of the modern intellectual framework for capitalism recognised that capitalists who refused to be concerned with moral issues would undermine the system that fed their wealth?