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There is no single person who knows how to build even something as simple as a pencil.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

Not true. This is a form of the broken window fallacy, i.e. the theory that the economy benefits if I go around throwing rocks through windows, because window repairmen will be paid to fix them. This is false because the money that is spent paying repairmen would otherwise have been put to more productive uses. More detail here. Likewise, free entertainment means that people have more money to spend on other areas. While it would hurt Time Warner, the overall economy would actually benefit.

I am the oppsoite of a capitalist; I don't believe a strong government should exist to force people to behave in ways to stimulate the economy

Not sure what you mean here. I do consider myself a capitalist, and I oppose a strong government "forcing" people to stimulate the economy. The essence of capitalism is voluntary exchange of goods and services.

In the Austrian school of economics you find out that a company can never get big enough to fully crush all competition. Ludwig von Mises proved, for example, in the 1930's that Socialism couldn't work because in a planned economy, you just don't know how much stuff is supposed to cost. Socialism

Small companies form, take those monopoly rents away, and the big company loses market share. Open source software is doing this now. Yes, Microsoft has a big market share, but linux is severly impinging on the server market, and threatens the desktop market.

Cell phones are doing this now, both in the US and overseas. It's a great way to solve the old last mile problem. Who knows, maybe without the huge, inefficient power monopolies we'd have a lot of nuclear power plants, or smaller, more numerous plants without the cost of the extremely long transmission lines with the booster stations, or wind power, or even more solar! But it's the government restrictions on who could enter the market that causes market irregularities.

Read more about the exiciting world of Austrian Economics at the Mises institute and LewRockwell.com

Precisely. This concept is more fully expounded in Bastiat's Fallacy of the Broken Window.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power" -- Mussolini

More information about this (section titled "7 Fascism"). Particularly the following:

The programme of the Fascists, as drafted in 1919, was vehemently anti-capitalistic. The most radical New Dealers and even communists could agree with it. When the Fascists came to power, they had forgotten those points of their programme which referred to the liberty of thought and the press and the right of assembly. In this respect they were conscientious disciples of Bukharin and Lenin. Moreover they did not suppress, as they had promised, the industrial and financial corporations. Italy badly needed foreign credits for the development of its industries. The main problem for Fascism, in the first years of its rule, was to win the confidence of the foreign bankers. It would have been suicidal to destroy the Italian corporations.

Fascist economic policy did not--at the beginning--essentially differ from those of all other Western nations. It was a policy of interventionism. As the years went on, it more and more approached the Nazi pattern of socialism. When Italy, after the defeat of France, entered the second World War, its economy was by and large already shaped according to the Nazi pattern. The main difference was that the Fascists were less efficient and even more corrupt than the Nazis.

But Mussolini could not long remain without an economic philosophy of his own invention. Fascism posed as a new philosophy, unheard of before and unknown to all other nations. It claimed to be the gospel which the resurrected spirit of ancient Rome brought to the decaying democratic peoples whose barbarian ancestors had once destroyed the Roman empire. It was the consummation both of the Rinascimento and the Risorgimento in every respect, the final liberation of the Latin genius from the yoke of foreign ideologies. Its shining leader, the peerless Duce, was called to find the ultimate solution for the burning problems of society's economic organization and of social justice.

From the dust-heap of discarded socialist utopias, the Fascist scholars salvaged the scheme of guild socialism. Guild socialism was very popular with British socialists in the last years of the first World War and in the first years following the Armistice. It was so impracticable that it disappeared very soon from socialist literature. No serious statesman ever paid any attention to contradictory and confused plans of guild socialism. It was almost forgotten when the Fascists attached it to a new label, and flamboyantly proclaimed corporativism as the new social panacea. The public inside and outside of Italy was captivated. Innumerable books, pamphlets and articles were written in praise of the stato corporativo. The governments of Austria and Portugal very soon declared that they were committed to the noble principles of corporativism. The papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931) contained some paragraphs which could be interpreted--but need not be--as an approval of corporativism. In France its ideas found many eloquent supporters.

It was mere idle talk. Never did the Fascists make any attempt to realize the corporativist programme, industrial self-government. They changed the name of the chambers of commerce into corporative councils. They called corporazione the compulsory organizations of the various branches of industry which were the administrative units for the execution of the German pattern of socialism they had adopted. But there was no question of the corporazione's self-government. The Fascist cabinet did not tolerate anybody's interference with its absolute authoritarian control of production. All the plans for the establishment of the corporative system remained a dead letter.

At the point when the carrying capacity of the commons was fully reached, a herdsman might ask himself, "Should I add another animal to my herd?" Because the herdsman owned his animals, the gain of so doing would come solely to him. But the loss incurred by overloading the pasture would be "commonized" among all the herdsmen. Because the privatized gain would exceed his share of the commonized loss, a self-seeking herdsman would add another animal to his herd. And another. And reasoning in the same way, so would all the other herdsmen. Ultimately, the common property would be ruined.

But the solution as I see it is not heavy-handed government regulation to regulate every step of producing microchips. Ideally, each producer would have to pay a tax according to how much pollution they create.

Certainly, the purification process requires a lot of work and generates waste, but this is not limited to the semiconductor industry. Take a look at the petroleum, steel, or electricity production industry. In western Pennsylvania, the steel industry and power plants continue to produce the majority of air pollution in the area.

It would be more worthwhile to seek to reduce pollution from those industries which produce many more pounds of pollution than the semiconductor industry.

Airlines were deregulated in 1978.

What was that you were saying?

Big profits are removed, and so are big losses. Since the latter is much worse than the former to the country as a whole, I support regulation.

Look, whether or not you agree with regulation is up to you. But removing big losses is generally not a good economic idea, because it makes uncompetitive companies survive. Remember that if a major airline went under tomorrow, all its physical assets don't magically disappear. Some other airline would buy up the planes, the gates, the landing rights, you name it. The world didn't collapse when Eastern Airlines bit the dust. Sure, some people lost their jobs, but that's why we have unemployment benefits - to get them through the tough times until they can find another job.

Stick with the cable cases - but don't pretend that deregulation was always a flop. It did wonders for trucking, rail transport (of freight), air travel, and long distance. It can be done badly - like power in California - but it's worked more times than it hasn't.

Also, I'm not sure about your anecdotal evidence on Cable, but I can tell you that Cox cable was able to get me a cable modem a full 1.5 /years/ before regulated Verizon got off their asses long enough to get DSL available at my (urban) home. Even if DSL was rolled-out, it would have taken them 6 weeks to do an install where my cable modem took 3 days. Cox had a 0% price increase last year and my basic cable costs $6 since I have a cable modem through them. By contrast, my regulated Verizon local phone service costs like 50 bucks! Amazing!

Deregulation, if done correctly, is a good thing. If you want to write a treatise against deregulation, cite the CA power deregulation or something.

The main impracticality is that Libertarians dont get elected. And they wont without coalition building. The Republican party is where you belong. You should join the Republican Liberty Caucus which is the libertarian wing of the Republican party and you should vote Republican, and send your elected Reps a sharp note and tell em what you really think. Democrats (aka Socialists) will rarely listen but right-thinking non-fossilized types will.

BTW, I agree that Bastiat's The Law is a great work

What is the difference between a ``past example'' and an argument?

Do not forget that a strong State is the best guardian of individual rights, simply by the virtue of ruling-in and checking the power of big croporations over the people.

I think that you meant ``reigning in''. This is an interesting theory. Dead wrong, mind you, but interesting. The state perhaps can, and certainly should, be exactly that. In fact, of course, it never works out that way.

... the most prevalent anglo-saxon neurosis: fear of the State.

What does Anglo-Saxon have to do with this? What you call ``fear of the state'' has its roots in the writings of the Roman and Greek philosophers of 2000 years ago. They weren't anglo saxons. The human experience with strong states has been universally disasterous. The one thing which is unique to the western world (but not to anglo-saxons) is that we have some hope for limiting government, and thus safeguarding individual rights. We are still working out the details of how to protect individuals from non-government groups, but more than 5000 years of history tells us that strong government is a cure worse than any disease.

As it is, I think that time has come. Clearly people no longer thing there's anything to be gained from copyright. I'm inclined to agree. Once, it took a long time to copy a book, and if you 'published' something, copyright was your only protection from other people selling it. But as it is now, the moment you start selling a book, a CD or whatever, you can publish so many copies that there would be no point in others trying to sell the same thing. Once a book is on the store shelves, nobody is going to type up the whole book, lay it out, and print it - there just wouldn't be any point. The person that got their first would be such an advantage due to having a head-start that they'd make tons of money anyway...

This entire paragraph is inconsistent and makes little sense yet the fact that it is currently at +4 insightful just goes to show that any anti-copyright rant no matter how incoherent will be well received on Slashdot. If there was no copyright then the incentive to write books would drop significantly. Currently writing a good book (both fiction and non-fiction) is a significant effort that requires research, perseverance and a large expendition of time.

If after expending n amount of months or years someone can just copy books I author for free then the Opportunity Cost of writring books will become to high for me and I'll find another line of work or write less.

The main problem with rants like yours is that they are throw the baby out with the bath water solutions. Most people agree that life of author + 70 years is an obscene amount of time to hold copyright on an intellectual work and is harmful to society in the long run. Similarly the lengths that content producers are beginning to go to so as to prevent copyright infringement have begun to intrude on the rights of consumers. However saying that intellectual works should be devalued as to where they should be offered no protection is just as harmful to society if not more.

Would you also suggest abolishing the welfare or health systems because there are inefficiencies therein and people who cheat the system? I sincerely hope the answer is no.

This analysis is a variant on Bastiat's Fallacy of the Broken Window.

To extend Bastiat's argument, if a city were so riddled with vandals that everyone had their windows broken every few days, then window repair would be part of the "cost of living" which is "automagically accounted for in salaries and pricing". Your argument implies that if the vandalism were stopped, then prices and wages would fall in such a way that the net standard of living would not increase -- which is absurd, since it is obvious on its face that people who are constantly beset by vandals have a lower standard of living than people who are not.
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