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Some non-gov't approved info about Waco here. (Follow the link at the bottom to a very big pdf file.)

So far, there are a lot of "if you aren't doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about" posts. That line of thought is completely invalid when discussing the War on (Some) Drugs. The DEA and other police agencies typically sieze the cash upon any suspicion of drug activity. If the person is arrested and acquitted, or not arrested at all, the DEA/pigs get to keep the cash. There are many documented instances available online (no link--I'm lazy), even through the rightist Cato Institute.

It is estimated that a conviction is not obtained in 80% of cases where cash/assets are siezed due to suspicion of drugs. That means that money is stolen by the government in 80% of seizure cases. I have read testimony given before our Congress by experts on the law; they don't seem to care. Since the speed-freak president Nancy Reagan declared a War on (Some) Drugs nearly twenty years ago, billions of dollars have been stolen from innocent people. This money has been used to arm every police department with machine guns, riot shotguns, body armor, armored carriers, etc...

Meanwhile, most of the "facts" used by the anti-drug people have been debunked. However, bullshit is often more persistent than reality, so the general public is still convinced that (some) drugs are totally evil.

The DEA sucks, too. One of their agents shot and killed an unarmed guy while making a buy in Jacksonville, Florida last year. The agent said it was an accident--he will never be prosecuted. It is 100% legal, if you wear a badge, to murder someone selling a plant that has been used safely by millions of people. Meanwhile, alcohol is blamed for over 100,000 deaths annually.

We now have the police state we asked for.

Thuggish? That term attaches best to unions, not to their opponents. You want to see "thuggish", go watch what happens to truckers that drive where the Teamsters have decreed that no trucks should go. U.S. labor law is so screwed up, union violence isn't even illegal. The Cato Institute reports:

Under the Supreme Court's 1973 Enmons decision, vandalism, assault, even murder by union officials are exempt from federal anti-extortion law. As long as the violence is aimed at obtaining property for which the union can assert a "lawful claim"--for example, wage or benefit increases-- the violence is deemed to be in furtherance of "legitimate" union objectives.

I don't think "thuggish" was the right word. Maybe you meant to say "running-dog lackey collaborators of the Western imperialist hegemons" instead.

So true! And the defendant is hardly affected financially, but they are protected from any* future lawsuits from class members. Class action lawsuits are bunk!

*Any lawsuits on the same topic.
No .sig here.

Public schools tend not to be racially or economically diverse because they only admit people who live in that school district and the districts themselves are segregated racially and economically. Here's a link to a 1996 Cato Institute study on What Would a School Voucher Buy?. From the executive summary:

A school voucher of $3,000 per student per year would give more families the option of sending their children to non-government schools. However, many people believe that such a small amount could not possibly cover tuition at a private school; they may be thinking of such costly schools as Dalton, Andover, and Exeter and concluding that all private schools cost in excess of $10,000 a year.

In fact, Education Department figures show that the average private elementary school tuition in America is less than $2,500. The average tuition for all private schools, elementary and secondary, is $3,116, or less than half of the cost per pupil in the average public school, $6,857. A survey of private schools in Indianapolis, Jersey City, San Francisco, and Atlanta shows that there are many options available to families with $3,000 to spend on a child's education. Even more options would no doubt appear if all parents were armed with $3,000 vouchers.

(1) and (2) deal with the current problem; (3) and (4) change the dynamic so that future kids have a better situation than the current ones.

More specifics: the major California voucher proposal a few years back was designed by a teacher who had worked in a $1000/year school that catered to poor black families in East LA; the vouchers were designed to help more poor families afford schools like hers, and the vouchers were to be for an amount that was about half what the california school system was then spending. (IIRC, it was a $2600 voucher at a time when average California spending was $5200.)

If it did catch on with Americans, who would the early adopters be? If Honda Insight buyers are any guide, it would be Republicans, who among Insight owners outnumber Democrats by two-to-one. Counterintuitive?

Ever think that maybe government involvement in space research is a bad idea. Check out Cato's conference on Space: The Free Market Frontier. Certainly a different perspective than would you get around here.
Stuart Eichert

"Ordinary law abiding citizens" dramatically increase the chance of killing someone in their home if they own a gun.

Most people are unlikely to go out of their way to buy a handgun, but if it is readily available then they may well do so.

The very phrasing of your comment shows that you view a waiting period as a way to discourage the lawful ownership of a handgun, rather than as a means of doing a legitimate criminal check, or as a (dubious) means of stopping "crimes of passion."

There is an interesting paper called The Rise of Worker Capitalism .

This may come in handy when they decide to Deregulate Banking.

Cato published an alternative viewpoint on the UN report in the 01/22/01 Daily Dispatch. In this short article they sight an important work by Patrick J. Michaels explaining why the threat from global warming is overrated. That work, co-written by Robert Balling is called The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming.
Stuart Eichert

Cato published an alternative viewpoint on the UN report in the 01/22/01 Daily Dispatch. In this short article they sight an important work by Patrick J. Michaels explaining why the threat from global warming is overrated. That work, co-written by Robert Balling is called The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming.
Stuart Eichert

Cato published an alternative viewpoint on the UN report in the 01/22/01 Daily Dispatch. In this short article they sight an important work by Patrick J. Michaels explaining why the threat from global warming is overrated. That work, co-written by Robert Balling is called The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming.
Stuart Eichert

Cato published an alternative viewpoint on the UN report in the 01/22/01 Daily Dispatch. In this short article they sight an important work by Patrick J. Michaels explaining why the threat from global warming is overrated. That work, co-written by Robert Balling is called The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming.
Stuart Eichert

at the end user level it is a natural monopoly. Few houses or even factories have more than one incoming power cable, so whoever owns that or the equipment upstream has to be regulated in some way

If a natural monopoly is understood as a condition in which a single efficient seller (or in this case, distributor) can serve the entire relevant market at a lower average cost than can multiple sellers, it would appear that we have a testable proposition. Yet as economist Walter Primeaux has discovered, electricity rates were lower in municipalities that had vigorous competition and multiple distribution grids at the advent of monopoly regulation than in municipalities with little or no competition and a single distribution grid. In fact consumers in several dozen municipalities today, such as Lubbock, Texas and Clyde, Ohio, have a choice of electricity providers, each with their own separate transmission and distribution facilities; yet, these customers purchase power at rates below the regional average. This simply should not happen under any reading of the natural monopoly model.

Moreover, if this economic diagnosis of the electricity industry were correct, one should expect to find evidence of natural monopoly-that is, evidence that a single competitor achieved economies of scale sufficient to drive out competitors and capture the market-in the hazy mists of history prior to utility regulation. But investigations by Bradley and other experts have yielded no such examples of natural monopoly.

Or this:

Although it is popular for analysts to speak of the electricity industry as a natural monopoly, even a brief review of the development of the industry will lead to the opposite conclusion. Industry historian Robert L. Bradley, Jr., president of the Houston-based Institute for Energy Research, has noted, "The opening era of the electric industry was characterized by competing franchises and `regulation by competition.'" In other words, rivalry, not regulation, protected consumers. In fact, as economist Burton N. Behling noted in 1938, "There is scarcely a city in the country that has not experienced competition in one or more of the utility industries." Behling noted that six electrical companies were organized in 1887 to serve New York City and five companies vied for customer loyalty in Chicago in 1907. Smaller cities also saw competitors rise up to serve their citizens. Duluth, Minnesota, was served by five electrical companies in 1895, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, was served by four firms in 1906.

The result of this free market experience, which lasted from 1882 to 1907, was, in Bradley's words, "very positive for consumers.... [T]he quantity [of electricity] supplied was rapidly increasing from technological advances and expanding affordability, and prices were falling from declining costs and open competition." This era also saw a staggering increase in generation capacity and overall production capability. As Bradley aptly noted, "This expansion rate, which would not be subsequently equaled, hardly suggests the 'monopolistic' practice of restricting output to maintain or increase prices."

This evidence strongly suggests that the electric industry was never a natural monopoly.

Or even this:

The natural monopoly case has been the classic argument for public ownership. As indicated in the previous topic the understanding of the nature of natural monopoly has been enhanced, and at the same time changes in technology have eliminated the natural monopoly situation especially in electricity generation.

Don't be fooled by the politicians, the electric companies, or their lackeys. Competition is the solution; they are terrified.

The last article, written in 1998, suggested that as Congress look at electricity de-regulation, that it NOT follow the Californian model, for these reasons:

The short answer is that politicians rather than market forces designed the restructured California electricity system. Politicians, while paying lip service to deregulation and the magic of the market, could not bring themselves to simply let go of the industry. Reflecting the fear of both consumer activists and electric utilities that real markets would prove disastrous, the California legislature placed constraints on the restructured industry whose net effect was to stifle the very forces necessary to drive down California's utility rates. Consumer choice thus became a meaningless exercise.

The last article, written in 1998, suggested that as Congress look at electricity de-regulation, that it NOT follow the Californian model, for these reasons:

The short answer is that politicians rather than market forces designed the restructured California electricity system. Politicians, while paying lip service to deregulation and the magic of the market, could not bring themselves to simply let go of the industry. Reflecting the fear of both consumer activists and electric utilities that real markets would prove disastrous, the California legislature placed constraints on the restructured industry whose net effect was to stifle the very forces necessary to drive down California's utility rates. Consumer choice thus became a meaningless exercise.

The last article, written in 1998, suggested that as Congress look at electricity de-regulation, that it NOT follow the Californian model, for these reasons:

The short answer is that politicians rather than market forces designed the restructured California electricity system. Politicians, while paying lip service to deregulation and the magic of the market, could not bring themselves to simply let go of the industry. Reflecting the fear of both consumer activists and electric utilities that real markets would prove disastrous, the California legislature placed constraints on the restructured industry whose net effect was to stifle the very forces necessary to drive down California's utility rates. Consumer choice thus became a meaningless exercise.

Let me first start by saying that the issue of drugs is probably the only area on which I have anyway conservative views - but even I can see that the 'War on Drugs' launched by America is not only a failure, but a catastrophy.

I would almost say world-wide catastrophy.
Sites like november.org give a smattering of alarming statistics about the effects in America of the war on drugs(for example "The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation, bank robbery or manslaughter..."). Walter Cronkite takes a dim view of the war here. Also, some surprising 'mistakes' of the war on drugs can be found here.

But here's where the international aspect comes in: most of the War on Drugs aid that is being sent to foreign(i.e. non-US) nations is being mainly used to support regiemes that otherwise might topple. For instance Marxist rebels in Columbia have found themselves pitted against a regieme supported by War on Drugs money and soldiers trained by American 'advisors'. As freerepublic.com puts it :"Formally, all U.S. aid to Colombia, which produces most of the world's cocaine and most of the heroin consumed in the United States, is intended for anti-drug rather than counter-insurgency efforts. But in practical terms, the distinction is fading...". Ironic, considering it's pro-government paramilitaries that control the larger proportion of the drugs trade...the very same paramilitaries that routinely commit genocidal raids on villages that have tried to remain neutral...the very same paramilitaries that wander Columbia armed with American made weaponary such as MP-5s and secure in their training from American soldiers...oops! I mean advisors. No-one's saying that the rebels are angels - they too have participated in the drugs trade and kidnapping and so on. I'm just saying when a policy has got it so wrong, both on the American domestic front and on the foreign front, why is the policy persued so fanactically by certain Americans?
Anyway....just to be more on topic, I saw C4's 'Traffikk', pretty good. I hope the film 'Traffic' hasn't dulled the message too much so as to render the message unreadable to the vast majority of people(i.e. non-slashdotters 8).

8)

Unfortunately, I could not find all five studies. I was able to find this one.

--Loyal

• Canadian campaign finance reform has lead to the lowest voter turnout ever
• The last Canadian election was most negative and disingenuous in memory because candidates don't have enough money to get out more expensive and polished positive messages.
• Canadian campaign finance reform has become an "incumbent protection system" since challengers can't mount effective challenges to the free publicity that comes from being in office.

What part of 'real dollars' is unclear?

As for the rest of your replies, I'll just refer you to the report on the Kansas City debacle put out by the Libertarian Cato Institute. Here's the executive summary:

For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever tried." In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can't be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.

Your opinion that drug dealers do not harm anyone is incorrect- people who could have been productive are ruined through exploitation of their weakness. They provide a temporary illusary benefit to the user, while destroying the users potential. If you create an addict and do not believe you are evil, you are a fool or a liar.

True, a person who uses nicotene or other drugs is aware of the health risk, but the nature of the substance prevents them from attempting to quit.

Using a persons desire for your own benefit, with no regard for their life, is evil and produces more evil. This is what a drug dealer does.

Drugs create an illusion of a perfect life

Reign in Hell.. Serve in heaven...

Just think before you write or speak, because thought is either a cure or a disease, and is spread by every single word you write or speak.

I recently talked to a friend of mine who grew up in north Philly. When he was a kid in the ghetto, the people he looked up to were the dealer's.

Table 1. Chances of going to State or Federal prison for the first time,
by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin

Total------5.1
White*-----2.5
Black*----16.2
Hispanic---9.4

*Excludes persons of Hispanic origin.

Where did the discussion of a flat tax come in? :-)

And I believe, a sales tax does tax everybody equally.&nbsp As I stated in my previous message, all income is eventually consumed.&nbsp That means rich and poor will eventually be taxed alike.&nbsp Will poor people pay more on taxes for necessities.&nbsp You bet.&nbsp What of it?&nbsp Poor people now spend most of their money on necessities.&nbsp Don't tax food then I guess.

(Especially since you'd have to drastically raise sales taxes to make up even a small percentage of the revenue lost by eliminating the income tax. I'm all for smaller government, but you still need some money, or are you for eliminating public works altogether?)

What do you consider drastic?&nbsp According to the Cato Institute, it'd initially be a 15 percent sales tax that would decline over time.&nbsp See the info here.&nbsp As for eliminating all public works, no, I don't agree with that notion but I am for eliminating some of them.

A democracy fundamentally depends on an informed electorate to hold its representatives and public officials to account, but what if the electorate not only is uninformed, but is incapable of being sufficiently well informed to exercise control? Jeffrey Friedman of Harvard University argues that this is indeed the case: poll after poll shows that, on any given significant political issue, the majority of the American public is profoundly ignorant of the most basic relevant facts. This phenomenon is even more pronounced for women, who tend to be more unaware of national issues. The majority of Americans base their voting on non-factual criteria such as blind loyalty to party or social group, or to whether a candidate is sufficiently "caring", "trustworthy", or "presidential," and the oft-lamented spin-doctors and sound bites are an inevitable result. This is not to denigrate American citizens: since the 1930's, the politcal sphere has expanded tremendously, and is now beyond the ability of most educated people to fully understand. If the educational system cannot prepare citizens to control their government, the sphere of government must be reduced to be within their control.

You're so wrong on so much here. I don't have the energy to get into it right now, but CATO does a pretty good job clarifying your supposed facts. Though you might argue with CATO's conclusions given their conservative bias, you can't credibly argue with the actual verifiable data collected from the US census. Look it up yourself if you don't believe me.

Good night.

I pretty much agree...something needs to be done about the current tax code. I have always touted a flat tax rate or a national sales tax.

I think a national sales tax is the only truly fair tax system -- the more you consume, the more you pay. Of course, I would advocate exempting necssary food items, just like we do now.

Here is an interesting link to a Cato Institute study on this subject. One of the things they mention about a national sales tax is that it would actually cause a rise in the savings rate in this country (which is dismally low now).

The Economic Impact of Replacing Federal Income Taxes with a Sales Tax

Other links on this page deal with more taxation issues. Something that strikes me as amazing is this link which explains that in 1990, the top 1% of all taxpayers payed over 25% of all federal income taxes. The top 5% payed over 44%. And the top 50% of all taxpayers payed over 94% of all federal income taxes. Meaning that the bottom 50% of all taxpayers (over half of the country, since many people do not pay any income tax) only paid around 6% of all federal income taxes. I may be strange, but I find that highly disturbing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for society taking care of the less fortunate, but I don't care to subscribe to such a Robin Hood-esque strategy.

As a side note, I think the Estate (Inheritance/Death) Tax is a travesty. Only in our current ass-backwards system could we ever tax someone for dying.

---

I pretty much agree...something needs to be done about the current tax code. I have always touted a flat tax rate or a national sales tax.

I think a national sales tax is the only truly fair tax system -- the more you consume, the more you pay. Of course, I would advocate exempting necssary food items, just like we do now.

Here is an interesting link to a Cato Institute study on this subject. One of the things they mention about a national sales tax is that it would actually cause a rise in the savings rate in this country (which is dismally low now).

The Economic Impact of Replacing Federal Income Taxes with a Sales Tax

Other links on this page deal with more taxation issues. Something that strikes me as amazing is this link which explains that in 1990, the top 1% of all taxpayers payed over 25% of all federal income taxes. The top 5% payed over 44%. And the top 50% of all taxpayers payed over 94% of all federal income taxes. Meaning that the bottom 50% of all taxpayers (over half of the country, since many people do not pay any income tax) only paid around 6% of all federal income taxes. I may be strange, but I find that highly disturbing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for society taking care of the less fortunate, but I don't care to subscribe to such a Robin Hood-esque strategy.

As a side note, I think the Estate (Inheritance/Death) Tax is a travesty. Only in our current ass-backwards system could we ever tax someone for dying.

---

I pretty much agree...something needs to be done about the current tax code. I have always touted a flat tax rate or a national sales tax.

I think a national sales tax is the only truly fair tax system -- the more you consume, the more you pay. Of course, I would advocate exempting necssary food items, just like we do now.

Here is an interesting link to a Cato Institute study on this subject. One of the things they mention about a national sales tax is that it would actually cause a rise in the savings rate in this country (which is dismally low now).

The Economic Impact of Replacing Federal Income Taxes with a Sales Tax

Other links on this page deal with more taxation issues. Something that strikes me as amazing is this link which explains that in 1990, the top 1% of all taxpayers payed over 25% of all federal income taxes. The top 5% payed over 44%. And the top 50% of all taxpayers payed over 94% of all federal income taxes. Meaning that the bottom 50% of all taxpayers (over half of the country, since many people do not pay any income tax) only paid around 6% of all federal income taxes. I may be strange, but I find that highly disturbing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for society taking care of the less fortunate, but I don't care to subscribe to such a Robin Hood-esque strategy.

As a side note, I think the Estate (Inheritance/Death) Tax is a travesty. Only in our current ass-backwards system could we ever tax someone for dying.

---

You're looking at a poor man who thinks the capi- tal gains tax [cut] is the best thing that could happen to this country, because that's when the work will come back. People say capital gains are for the rich, but I've never been hired by a poor man. --New Jersey painting contractor

The tax on capital gains directly affects invest- ment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital . . . the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the econ- omy. --President John F. Kennedy, 1963

First of all, the states were always free to prohibit alcohol. The Commerce Clause allowed the Feds to regulate interstate commerce... and while this was intended as a means to control interstate trade wars and punitive tariffs, the text does not specify what sort of regulation. So even at that time, the Feds could ban interstate transport of alcohol.

But the key difference between the '20s and today is the status of the Commerce Clause. Up until the early 1930s, the Supreme Court followed what is now known as the "qualitative interpretation", narrowly construing it to mean something like, "if it's commerce, and it's interstate, the Feds may regulate it". The 10th amendment would have prevented a federal statute banning drugs.

Along comes FDR, an amazingly powerful president. To cut a long story short, he made the "quantitative interpretation" the accepted one. This might be paraphrased as, "if it affects interstate commerce in any way, the Feds may regulate it". It would be impossible to overstate the impact of this change... it's the foundation of the US government we know today.

In the 1919, the Supreme Court would have struck down a statutory Prohibition. By the 1940s, they wouldn't have. And while I think you'll still find that today the Feds leave a lot of drug stuff to the states (likely for financial reasons), they might change this policy if Alaska or New Mexico legalizes marijuana.

This is a much-abridged version of a very interesting story, by the way. If you'd like a nice introduction from the "new federalist" perspective (or bias, as you choose), check this Cato article. Note especially the somewhat shocking (to me :-) ) case, Wickard v. Filburn.

With four justices poised to retire, and two more solidly in the minority camp, this is the issue of this presidential election. Judicial activism, or judicial restraint. The principals know it, but most folks don't understand it, so the dialogue remains focused on details of this or that program.

... as well as the Canadian system and just about any other government-run system out there. "Universal Healthcare" sounds good but in reality, it don't work.

Please check the following article on more information on why Government-run Health Care is a Bad Idea.

http://www.cato.org//pubs/pas/pa184.htm l (Scroll down to "single-payer systems")

Note: I don't like the thought of insurance companies performing pre-screening any more than you do since it reeks of Gattaca. I personally have a genetically-inherited bleeding disorder and, while it's extremely rare that I run into complications because of it, it is expensive to treat.

BUT, I'd far rather take my chances with privately-owned insurance companies rather than some big government bureaucracy which will inevitably foul things up.

Rule of Thumb: The rate of government foul-ups increases exponentially the larger it gets.

If you don't believe me, Check out the facts here.

4 - Replace the ponzi scheme of Social Insecurity with privately funded and privately directed investments that each citizen owns for themselves.

The Chileans had a Social Insecurity system somewhat before we did (they started in the 1920's, we didn't start down the road to serfdom until FDR's 1930's). Chile privatized their Social Security system in 1980 and Chileans are now retiring as millionaires.

Our current system is weighted against poor, colored people, since they generally die before they get to collect any Social Insecurity, and Social Insecurity can't be passed on to their heirs.

A privatized system like the Chilean system won't discriminate against the working poor and will allow them to pass their benefits on to their survivors.

Replace the coercively-funded Social Insecurity system with a privately-funded pension system that will truly provide for the working poor. Vote Libertarian!

< CmdrTaco And Hemos Speaking At MIT Thurs | Mozilla-KDE Integration >

vapour
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..

FCC Reform
This section will include our work on downsizing, restructuring, or eliminating the hard-working Federal Commmunications Commission.

We have twelve years of Reagan/Bush to thank for no small part of this, so remember that in November ;)

Eight years of Clinton/Gore have been every bit as outrageous, and perhaps even worse, so I'd advise you to vote third party.
/.

I'm sorry, but if you're referring to Cato's Other Links Of Interest page, you didn't look closely enough. Heck, they link to the Brookings Institute too; can we claim on that basis that they are secretly Democratic Party supporters, advocates of greater regional planning and a "fair" living wage? I think not. That page is simply collection of links to various and sundry think tanks that might be of interest to Cato browsers. There's a libertarianish bias to the list but there are also a lot of outliers. IOS no more exemplifies Cato's core focus than does Brookings or Hoover or the Urban Institute.

Side note: I'm personally a Cato sponsor. And nope, I've got no interest in supporting the IOS.

Kind on/off topic (depends on your perspective)

I'm not disputing Cato's claims or Microsoft's. I'm just saying be aware that the Cato Institute has their own agenda.

Cato self labels itself as "market liberalism". But if you also search a little deeper in the other links, you will see a link to the Institute of Objectivist Studies. And in case you don't know what Objectivism is, it is based on Ayn Rand.

I bring this up only because these guys are a bit aggressive and not very open about the ties between them and IOS/Ayn Rand. Everyone remeber the John Stossel Report "GREED"? Well, ALL of his experts were from Cato or IOS. So the whole report was basically a platform for Objectivism. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see the agenda behind all the rest of John Stossel's "insightful" reports. So perhaps Stossel really is an "objective" reporter :-)

If you read up on their site, you will find discussion about how they (Objectivists) are actively trying to place Objectivist professors at the head of philosophy departments.

So, as with all things on slashdot, I would take their arguments with a grain of salt, remembering their perspective and view. Because that is how you think critically. Taking in all the facts.

Sorry, but wind power is one of the most ecologically atrocious power sources known, and is very strongly opposed by the Sierra Club (which calls windpower windmills the "Cuisinarts of the air") and the Audubon Society among others.

Fact: A 1992 study commissioned by the CEC (California Energy Commision) "conservatively" estimated that 39 golden eagles were being killed at Altamont Pass each year, a significant figure given a total population of 500 breeding pairs. On a percentage basis, the mortality rate per year at Altamont Pass under the estimate is eight times greater than the bald eagle kill from the Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound in 1989, and it recurs every year.

It isn't some big government conspiracy that keeps alternative energy sources from flourishing, but simply that their efficiency and "greenness" isn't nearly what their promoters would have you believe.

There are substantial ecological drawbacks to many alternative/"renewable" energy schemes, including wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, geothermal, and even conservation-based "negawatss". These drawbacks are often completely ignored by the proponents of these schemes, who usually stand to make a good pile of money themselves if they can get the government to fund their "green" proposal - such funding is required because none of these options can currently stnad on its own merit economically.

Again, this is a complex issue, but for a great review of the ecological dangers of wind in particualr and some others as well, read the very thorough Cato report Renewable Energy - Not Cheap, Not "Green" (Source of the fact quoted above, includes thier source for the information.)

If you're worried about Cato's rightward tilt, notice the number of environmentalist sources they use to make their argument, including a 1995 expose in SF Weekly.

The birds thank you!

author: Pulina Borsook
publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1891620789
pages: 256
rating: 8/10
summary: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech

I heard about Cyberselfish when driving around Vermont Memorial Day weekend from used bookstore to used bookstore. The NPR station was broadcasting an interview with Cyberselfish author Paulina Borsook, a writer who worked for Wired during its glory years. I was put off by the book's wretched title, but engrossed by the subject: the powerful undercurrent of libertarianism that flows through high-tech circles. I have been astounded but not amazed at the deeply adolescent and peevish libertarian attitudes that so many techies cling to, from gun worship to fear of governmental Internet regulation. Listening to Borsook speak intelligently and cogently about technolibertarianism made me want her book very much.

This month I garnered a copy of Cyberselfish, and I'm still appalled with the title (which comes from an eponymous essay for Mother Jones she wrote in July 1996, when such cyberlanguage wasn't so cybertrite). Cyberselfish is a book-length essay, in fact a somewhat thinly edited series of linked essays. There's a rush of immediacy and wit; for a random example, "Polyamory is the preferred term of art; it's gender-neutral, where polygamy and polyandry are not, and allows for all persuasions of partner choice (gay/straight/bi/it depends)." With the freshness and informality comes flaws. There is too much repeated material in the book. It's clear that essays written at different times have been cobbled together. Reading the book straight through is like reading some multivolume series straight through, in which the characters and history are rehashed at the beginning of each book.

Cyberselfish looks at a few specific examples of technolibertarianism in depth: Bionomics, cypherpunks, Wired magazine, and Silicon Valley's impressive lack of philanthropy. Each time Borsook exposes the compassionless, fearful, posturing, politically myopic core, without dismissing the good aspects of the high-tech culture and individuals. For example, she thinks fighting for privacy rights is good, but obsessing about it and descending into rabid, paranoid ranting on alt.cypherpunks is scary. She moves smoothly from the historical to the academic to the personal, deliberately exposing her own frailities and biases while she examines those of others.

To give a deeper example of the content of Cyberselfish, Bionomics is the use of biological (and particularly Darwinian) metaphors to describe economic processes, as popularized by Michael Rothschild (Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem) and then the The Bionomics Institute (TBI). Borsook convincingly points out through both empirical observation and reasoned analysis that Bionomics boils down to economic libertarianism, where government involvement is wrong and the most cut-throat, efficient and entrepeneurial businesses are the best. Ecological metaphors are used in Bionomics only when they're useful and sexy: The ecosystem of Hawaii was used as a metaphor for the fragility of protected industries. Under Bionomics logic, Hawaii's beautiful, lush, peaceful ecosystem is to be derided. Bionomics uses metaphors to draw syllogistic conclusions. Doing that can be powerfully convincing but amounts to hand-waving and emotional appeals. Borsook cuts through the smoke and mirrors.

After a few years, the Bionomics Institute conferences were (literally) taken over by the Cato Institute, the premier libertarian think tank in the nation. The annual Bionomics conterences began in 1993. The 1997 conference was the Cato/Bionomics Conference; 1998, the "Annual Cato Institute/Forbes ASAP Conference on Technology and Society." TBI morphed into software-startup Maxager, which intends to offer Bionomical tools to companies. Borsook wonders what meaning can be ascribed to the success or the failure of the company. If Maxager fails, is it because it wasn't Bionomically good enough, or just because of the many uncontrollable factors that cause the vast majority of startups to fail? If it succeeds, does it validate Bionomics, or just the good connections the founder has with Silicon Valley venture capitalists?

The other chapters are just as interesting. Cyberselfish sharply describes all the archetypes of the technolibertarians, from the neo-hippie polyandric Burning Man attendee to the Lexus-driving, 100-hour-a-week, plugged-in entrepeneur with a sprawling bungalow in Santa Clara county.

One of the most crystalline passages in the book describes Eric Raymond's leaking of the Halloween Document, written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil. The two clearly have vast ideological differences, the open-source cowboy and the Evil Empire functionary, but they're both hard-core libertarians, an entirely unreported fact. In Borsook's words, "It was rather like discovering that both a liberal and a conservative senator had both acquired their law degrees from Yale: no news here."

As I said before, the book is somewhat haphazardly put together, and nearly every sentence is to some degree contentious; even someone who agrees with her basic position will find reason to quibble. Cyberselfish doesn't come near to answering all the questions it raises. Borsook doesn't really tackle the paradox that "libertarians celebrate the cult of the individual" but Open Source celebrates the collective. What does it mean to be an Open Source libertarian?

I personally think it's somewhat unfair to attack those flaws, as they're inexorably part of Cyberselfish's loose, immediate, opinionated, and conversational style. It's kind of like how Slashdot's open forums allow for a review like this and the inevitable "hot grits" responses.

The United States Postal Service, while originally spawned by the government, is not part of the government at this point in any way. It's an independant agency. So to say that it's a government agency that's carrying your correspondence is incorrect. They only have a little bit more to do with the government than UPS or FedEx.

The United States Post Office Department was once a cabinet-level agency, but that was changed in 1969, when it was converted to what is called an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States". The Postmaster General is appointed by a board of governors that the President appoints. Postal employees are counted as Federal employees.

Perhaps you're thinking of an independent quasi-governmental corporation like Amtrak. This solution was proposed but rejected by Congress during postal reform. The USPS is self-supporting and often acts like a company, but in reality it retains a Congressional mandate to offer flat-rate postal service to all parts of the US, whether or not it's profitable.

I know what you're saying, but you went too far in suggesting it's "not part of the government in any way". True, it has much more discretion and independence than most federal agencies, it's insulated from politics by having a governing board, and it is structured much more like a corporation than an agency. But it most certainly remains part of the government.

Whether the US will follow the lead of some other countries and spinoff the postal service as a public corporation remains to be seen. (Even Germany, when it spun off Deutsche Telekom, retained the bundespost as a government agency -- although to this day they own 51% of DT stock.) In the end the internet may eventually make snail mail obsolete, but not just yet. At this point postal mail is recognized as an essential service of government in almost every nation.

The Cato institute sponsored a talk on Postal Service privatization if you're interested.
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Hrunting: I hate how every time someone decides to talk about that wonderous new invention e-mail, the end of the discussion always has to be a statement like this.

Yes, we will need a postal service of some sort for a long time, whether it's a corporation called the United States Postal Service or one called FedEx.

I think you missed his point. Email doesn't make the USPS irrelevant; companies like FedEx make the USPS irrelevant. Or would, if the USPS didn't have a legal monopoly on first class mail.

And as far as government organizations go, the post office isn't exactly like other governmental organizations. They don't depend on the Congressional budget and they operate as a corporation, not as an agency.

Except for nonprofit mailers; they get tax subsudies. Happily the USPS determines who qualifies... which is why magazines like Smithsonian, Mother Jones, and Reason get to mail at taxpayer expense. But yes, the USPS mostly gets it's revenue through business-class (junk) mail, their rates kept low by (illegally) raising first class mail prices.

They are actually an example of an excellently run part of the government and make a strong argument for modeling the different agencies after corporations.

The USPS is much like many corporations in spirit at least... insofar as if the corporations had the power, they'd be despots. In the '70s, they went so far as to tear open FedEx packages, find the senders, and threaten them with Federal prosecution. They tried to ban private email in '79... we may thank, of all people, the folks at the FCC that they failed. Then they started their own day email-to-snailmail system, ECOM: they charged $0.26/letter, and they never lost less than $1.25/letter. Despite electronic transmission, the mail took 2+ days to show up, and 70% of the mail came from an auto advertiser in Detroit... but happily 30% of what got sent ever showed up.

Today they won't allow private companies to deliver to post boxes, and they tried to make private delivery boxes illegal. When they failed, they began requiring companies offering private boxes to collect and report information on their clients: information Congress had forbade the USPS to collect on their own customers. Since government regulations measure lateness from the time the mail leaves the Post Office for final delivery, they've been known to load mail into trailers and roll them outside for weeks at a time.

Bring down their legal monopoly, and you'll see the USPS do an even better imitation of many corporations: they'll go out of business.

While I don't think the e-mail address thing is a good idea, I don't think it is a bad one, either. And I think the Post Office will do a /much/ better job or regulating and controlling abuses to its system than organizations like Hotmail and Yahoo do.

The first sentence of the artice sums it up: it would link the e-mail and real-world addresses in a giant Postal Service database in Memphis, Tenn. Same reason they make private box companies report customer information: to keep a record of them. And as with Social Security, what's optional today may not be tomorrow. Tomorrow you may have to have one, but not have to use it. Once everybody's got one, we'll start hearing arguments about unregulated mail, drugs and terrorism... same arguments which still help prop up the USPS' monopoly. One of many paranoid reasons not to like this.

_____

I should note... most of the facts I quote here are from two excellent articles. The first is on the Postal Monopoly, published by the Cato Institute. The second is on the USPS' most recent efforts to do something about rampant privacy in America. It's by Ron Paul, Representative from Texas. I strongly suggest reading both, as they convey more than I could have justly summarized here, even if that were my purpose.

Hrunting: I hate how every time someone decides to talk about that wonderous new invention e-mail, the end of the discussion always has to be a statement like this.

Yes, we will need a postal service of some sort for a long time, whether it's a corporation called the United States Postal Service or one called FedEx.

I think you missed his point. Email doesn't make the USPS irrelevant; companies like FedEx make the USPS irrelevant. Or would, if the USPS didn't have a legal monopoly on first class mail.

And as far as government organizations go, the post office isn't exactly like other governmental organizations. They don't depend on the Congressional budget and they operate as a corporation, not as an agency.

Except for nonprofit mailers; they get tax subsudies. Happily the USPS determines who qualifies... which is why magazines like Smithsonian, Mother Jones, and Reason get to mail at taxpayer expense. But yes, the USPS mostly gets it's revenue through business-class (junk) mail, their rates kept low by (illegally) raising first class mail prices.

They are actually an example of an excellently run part of the government and make a strong argument for modeling the different agencies after corporations.

The USPS is much like many corporations in spirit at least... insofar as if the corporations had the power, they'd be despots. In the '70s, they went so far as to tear open FedEx packages, find the senders, and threaten them with Federal prosecution. They tried to ban private email in '79... we may thank, of all people, the folks at the FCC that they failed. Then they started their own day email-to-snailmail system, ECOM: they charged $0.26/letter, and they never lost less than $1.25/letter. Despite electronic transmission, the mail took 2+ days to show up, and 70% of the mail came from an auto advertiser in Detroit... but happily 30% of what got sent ever showed up.

Today they won't allow private companies to deliver to post boxes, and they tried to make private delivery boxes illegal. When they failed, they began requiring companies offering private boxes to collect and report information on their clients: information Congress had forbade the USPS to collect on their own customers. Since government regulations measure lateness from the time the mail leaves the Post Office for final delivery, they've been known to load mail into trailers and roll them outside for weeks at a time.

Bring down their legal monopoly, and you'll see the USPS do an even better imitation of many corporations: they'll go out of business.

While I don't think the e-mail address thing is a good idea, I don't think it is a bad one, either. And I think the Post Office will do a /much/ better job or regulating and controlling abuses to its system than organizations like Hotmail and Yahoo do.

The first sentence of the artice sums it up: it would link the e-mail and real-world addresses in a giant Postal Service database in Memphis, Tenn. Same reason they make private box companies report customer information: to keep a record of them. And as with Social Security, what's optional today may not be tomorrow. Tomorrow you may have to have one, but not have to use it. Once everybody's got one, we'll start hearing arguments about unregulated mail, drugs and terrorism... same arguments which still help prop up the USPS' monopoly. One of many paranoid reasons not to like this.

_____

I should note... most of the facts I quote here are from two excellent articles. The first is on the Postal Monopoly, published by the Cato Institute. The second is on the USPS' most recent efforts to do something about rampant privacy in America. It's by Ron Paul, Representative from Texas. I strongly suggest reading both, as they convey more than I could have justly summarized here, even if that were my purpose.

Actually, making money from the float has been quite viable. Several states fund legal aid programs from the float of money that's held in escrow by lawyers (although Cato argues this violates the takings clause of the Constitution, as it is compulsory; you can't request that you get the interest, and it can be spent on things to which you might be philosophically opposed). And my bank (USAA) seems to make money enough off float to rebate ATM charges, give a 0.5% cashback award on debit card purchases, etc. Granted, some of the cash comes from not building a branch every 1/4 mile, but float is nice.

But it WON'T. There are a lot more people out there than you'd think who are against the drug war, but you never hear of them (other than as a much of hippies) in mainstream media. In fact, if you think you'll EVER hear a pro-drug statement out of a major television network or newspaper, you're just wrong. Why?

Because the major networks and newspapers receive advertising revenue from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. (read: the DEA) When a news outlet deals with a government bureaucracy, if it does anything to anger that agency, it can kiss the advertising revenue goodbye along with any interviews with or information from that bureau's personnel. You can read about that and a lot of other stuff here. No television station or newspaper will cross the DEA. It's up to us.

For you to even suggest what we are "moving towards" is a "command economy" from what we've seen here is a pretty sad little knee-jerk. Have you've studied much history, let alone economics? Would you know what a command economy sounds like if you were getting spanked by one? Have you any idea the details of what Microsoft had to do to get themselves in the position they're in?

Why yes, I've studied just a wee bit of history (mostly U.S.) and economics ;)

My feeling that we're headed in the direction of a fully state-controlled economy comes from my observations over the last 12 years, the historical record of the U.S. before and after the 1930's (the period when statist economic policies exploded) the recent resurgence of antitrust enforcement, and from listening to C-Span every day on the car radio.

Most of all, this irks me because monopoly law is so basic. The fact of the matter is, capitalism screws up. It's logical for it to be screwed up. It follows easily that consolidation of wealth and mergers across interests will progress until they become self-sustaining. The more consolidated a marketplace, the less incentive there is to compete, and the easier it becomes to fix prices, with or without explicit collaboration. In many situations it's possible to end up with a single dominant entity controlling an entire market, with barriers to entry which are too forbidding for anyone to challenge. In these cases, the only thing between you and economic, technical, and social stagnation is a well-organized democratic government. The state where competition benefits "consumers" is, in many industries, a transitory accident.

This is a misconception about capitalism that was first propagated by Karl Marx, and has become very popular in the U.S. during the last 75 years.

Consider that consolidation is not always bad. Sometimes it brings with it economies of scale, which can lower price and increase quality for consumers.

Alan Greenspan wrote once in a piece called 'Antitrust' that if entry into a given field of production is not impeded by government regulations, franchises, or subsidies, "the ultimate regulator of competition in a free economy is the capital market. So long as capital is free to flow, it will tend to seek those areas which offer the maximum rate of return." Investors are constantly seeking the most profitable uses of their capital. If, therefore, some field of production is seen to be highly profitable (particularly due to high prices rather than to low costs), businessmen and investors necessarily will be attracted to that field; and as the supply of the product in question is increased relative to the demand for it, prices fall accordingly.

In other words, when capital is allowed to flow freely, even a large conglomerate that has 99.9% market share cannot raise prices with impunity, or VCs and potential competitors will start eyeing that market as a profitable one and will move in to take a chunk of it.

Captialism is not a panacea. Nothing is, besides collective intelligence. Reactionary belief in capitalism as somehow stronger or more productive a force than democracy shows a failure to understand what makes trouble for democracy in the first place.

What greater manifestation of collective intelligence is there than the trillions of economic decisions made every day in the marketplace?

That is the exact point of capitalism (aka free-market economics) - that the collection of economic choices made by billions of free individuals drive efficiency and productivity far better than some committee of suits in Washington could ever dream of.

The worst part is that you're sitting there on your Windows computer writing this. Hard-core, Reagan-era capitalism didn't give you a very good operating system, did it?

Actually I'm writing this on my Linux-Mandrake 7.0 computer. Occasionally X or Netscape will flake out, but the OS itself never crashes :)

Here are some links you may find useful in learning more about the free-market point of view:

http://www.laissezfaire.org/ (Laissez-Faire books)

http://www.free-market.net/

http://www.mises.org/ (Von Mises Institute)

CATO Institute

Which is unconstitutional. Article 1, Section 9. No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Well, it should be. The Supreme Court stupidly held that that only applied to criminal law, not civil law, back in 1789. Schmucks. The Sonny Bono act would have been unconstitutional. And, frankly, should still be. See here.

What are the "holes" in antitrust theory?

The hole is the idea that it is possible for a company to get a coercive monopoly in a free market, i.e. that a company can keep a high market share in the long run without keeping its customers happy. It's never happened, and there's a strong argument to be made that it never will. The specific economic reasons would take a complete post on their own.

The Cato institute makes the case against "predatory pricing" laws here. Similar arguments can be made concerning other aspects of Microsoft's actions, such as "tying" and "price gouging" as Microsoft is accused of doing.

The idea that a company can be so big that no competitor can topple it is just flat out wrong. As long as they don't have help from the government in keeping their monopoly, Microsoft can only keep competitors at bay by continuing to meet their customers' needs. In short, antitrust laws are unnecessary and should be repealed.

But we all know that luck and trechery beat out hard work and skill any day of the year. It isn't hard at all to see where Microsoft was unbelievably lucky (MS-DOS), and the trecherous part is what antitrust seeks to stop.


Sure, Microsoft got lucky. So what? They will get unlucky in the future. The key point is that Microsoft saw the opportunity and siezed it. You can't say that Microsoft's current dominance of the industry is due soley to stupidity on IBM's part 20 years ago. Microsoft has had several worthy competitors over the years, notably Apple and IBM (with OS/2.) It is hardly "luck" that allowed them to come out on top.

As for "treachery," my take on things is a little different. I don't think it should be illegal for Microsoft to use its success in one area to promote a product in another. Windows gives Microsoft an advantage in the marketplace, but it's not an insurmountable advantage. And if they use that dominance to push crappy products, they will eventually lose their position.

So "everybody" does not know that Microsoft's position is due to "luck and treachery." Yes, Microsoft has done some sleazy things, and yes, they are a fierce competitor. But they also give customers what they want, and they do it better than any of the competitors. They have innovated aggressively, adding new features, cutting costs, and improving their customers' experiences. They also used some aggressive business tactics, but all the aggressive business tactics in the world won't keep you customers if you don't meet their needs.

There is another type that I can think of: those people whose jobs depend on Microsoft products. Given that you don't know what the difference between NT server and NT workstation is (and thus how that relates to IIS), that you don't know how and why Direct3D got so popular, and that you don't know how much Internet Explorer costs, I think you are uninformed.

Fine, so enlighten me. The fact that I work primarily with the products of Microsoft's competitors makes my opinion irrelevant? This issue is fundamentally about economics, not technology.

And for the record, my job doesn't depend on Microsoft products either. I do most of my work on Unix, and pretty much the only apps I run on NT boxen are xterms and web browsers.

If you accept that there can be some anticompetitve actions taken by companies which are excusable

I reject the concept of "Anticompetitive actions." The only anticompetitive actions are those that involve coercion. And only the government is allowed to coerce and get away with it. Therefore, only the government can engage in anti-competitive actions without violating (non-antitrust) laws.

Companies only like "free markets" as long as they can enter the market freely to make money. Otherwise, they hate free markets. They would much rather be the sole producer of any given product. Then they wouldn't have to work so hard to make money. Companies would much rather sell us their excrement (literally!) than have to work hard to make good products. Competition ensures hard work and innovation, and companies can not be expected to play fair to ensure that competition exists.

Only with government help can a company permanently eliminate all competitors. As long as there are no government-imposed barriers to entry, a company must continue to satisfy its customers or they will go elsewhere.

Even without antitrust law, Microsoft is far from invincible. If they were to stop improving their products, Unix-based machines would eat into NT's market share, and Mac OS would take desktop market share. And if Microsoft stopped developing their product, it is likely that startups like Be or Red Hat would be able to gain a toehold. Once an alternative OS for the desktop has a sizable market share, it'll be all but impossible to eradicate it. Hell, Be is still being developed despite the fact that almost no one uses it. And Linux will continue to be developed no matter what happens in the marketplace. Even the mighty Microsoft must keep up with competitors to avoid losing their market dominance.

So, you won't explain why you don't think that the DoJ prosecution of Microsoft was political in origin?

But, to be fair, yes, my claim is the one that requires support. Previously, I missed out on the opportunity to explain and support this (I wasn't at the computer for a couple of days, and I didn't think anyone would actually SEE the reply), so I will do so now, briefly.

Before the anti-trust case, Microsoft avoided both the subtler and grosser forms of lobbying and contributing money to politicians.

Until a few years ago, Microsoft proudly refused to open a Washington office. Oddly, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman viewed this as demonstrating contempt for "rules and institutions."

From "Social Engineering by Legal Brief", The Washington Times, HTMLed here.

In contrast, the instigating companies in the case all happened to come from states (particularly California) with much more Congressional clout than Washington. Orrin Hatch, the Senator from Utah (the home of Novell) chaired the hearings where he personally blasted Microsoft and Bill Gates.

As pointed out in "Texas Swing", which appeared in the August/September 1998 issue of Reason, it's silly to try to pretend that anti-trust proceedings are disinterested government actions. Like most actions in our government, they involve the advancement of personal and corporate agendas and the application of political leverage in the form of favors and political contributions. Essentially, this entire trial is a big political favor to some of Microsoft's competitiors that also serves to promote the career of Joel Klein, one of the most active (and hence, famous) heads of the DoJ Antitrust Division in decades. (It's had little benefit to anyone else trying to jump on the bandwagon, and in fact, G.W. Bush got a little boost in the polls from announcing his opposition to the whole thing.) "The New Trustbusters" from the March 1999 Reason gives an interesting look at the curious history of antitrust, but more usefully, at its present application by those such as Klein. "Barbarians at Bill Gates" from the web site of the Foundation for Economic Education expands some of the points from that article with regards to MS's case.

Ultimately, this trial is a joke. The actions Microsoft is being punished for are only considered crimes because Microsoft holds a "monopoly" (meaning that it has no competition). This accusation of monopoly was brought by its competitors, of course. The trial showed that the presiding judge was biased against MS from the start, and the proposed and actual "remedies" wouldn't do anything to remove a monopoly if it really existed. (Or does anyone actually have a cogent explanation of how, if Windows is a monopoly, spinning it off into its own company will stop it from being a monopoly?)

What really gets me about this is that Linux and other forces would have brought down Microsoft in the marketplace in about the same timeframe this case will, assuming it doesn't get thrown out. And now, of course, when Windows slips from its current dominant position in (desktop intel-based system) OSes, as Lotus slipped away from its dominant position in spreadsheets years ago, interventionists will claim it was somehow due to the trial and not the workings of the free market. And Joel Klein will claim credit for that for the rest of his life.