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Point 2) My wife (an MD) makes a lot more than I do...

That's because she's in a field that is highly subsidised by the government.

It used to be that people became doctors primarily because they wanted to help other people. Big money was reserved for doctors who were true healers; most doctors had the standard of living of their patients, or a little bit more. Now there's the perception that doctors are super-well-paid, which attracts a different kind of student. I have a friend from college (who was some kind of engineer) who said he was applying to med school because it was his best chance at pulling in the big $$$$.

Understand the history of insurance, and you understand the problems with the insane cost of medical care today. Nutshell version: In the early 20th century, lumber mills offered "hospital insurance" as a benefit for their workers. If they got injured on the job, the company would pay their hospital tab. Durring WWII, the government imposed price caps on what companies could pay their workers. Needing more workers, some companies said, "if you work for us, we'll cover your doctor bills." Medicare started in 1965. Today, many private insurers use the Medicare payment scales as a model for what they'll cover. Pretty soon doctors figured out that since the government was paying, cost was no object in taking care of their patients... Which just so happened to line their pockets as well.

100 years of Medical Robery (part 1, on the history of the AMA and establishing a medical monopoly)
Real Medical Freedom (part 2, which really gets into the history of insurance)

My grandparents' experience demonstrates the folly of government insurance. My grandmother came down with end-stage blood-cancer about a year ago. Left untreated, she probably would have lasted a month or two. But she went to her doctors at the Mayo clinic, who left nothing on the table in trying to kill her cancer. I have no idea how much medicare spent on Grandma's behalf, but it was at least $50,000. The last visit they took a bone-biopsy, and her marrow was 90% cancerous. She died one week after starting hospice care, six months after the initial diagnosis - which was exactly how long her doctor said she'd last without treatment.

So what'd the goverment's $50k -> $100k buy? 4 months? maybe? If grandma had known what she would have to go through, I think she'd've gone for hospice first.

My grandfather collapsed and went unresponsive about two years ago. A couple of weeks later they said, "he needs a pacemaker". Didn't cost him anything, but Medicare and his secondary insurance put out $100,000 on his behalf. A year and a half after that (6 months ago), he collapses and goes unresponsive again. "You had a seizure, take these pills". (His pacemaker has NEVER fired...) Grandpa's case is a big guessing game for his doctors, and they don't care what it costs, because the government is picking up the tab.

I won't get into my maternal grandparent's experience (another $200k in the last 2-3 years?)

Medicare only serves to keep people alive past their expiration date, make medical providers vastly wealthier than they would be otherwise, and makes medical care for the rest of us cost more than it should.

Which infers that it also sucks smart people into the medical field with the promise of wealth and status, people who maybe would've been engineers.

Point 2) My wife (an MD) makes a lot more than I do...

That's because she's in a field that is highly subsidised by the government.

It used to be that people became doctors primarily because they wanted to help other people. Big money was reserved for doctors who were true healers; most doctors had the standard of living of their patients, or a little bit more. Now there's the perception that doctors are super-well-paid, which attracts a different kind of student. I have a friend from college (who was some kind of engineer) who said he was applying to med school because it was his best chance at pulling in the big $$$$.

Understand the history of insurance, and you understand the problems with the insane cost of medical care today. Nutshell version: In the early 20th century, lumber mills offered "hospital insurance" as a benefit for their workers. If they got injured on the job, the company would pay their hospital tab. Durring WWII, the government imposed price caps on what companies could pay their workers. Needing more workers, some companies said, "if you work for us, we'll cover your doctor bills." Medicare started in 1965. Today, many private insurers use the Medicare payment scales as a model for what they'll cover. Pretty soon doctors figured out that since the government was paying, cost was no object in taking care of their patients... Which just so happened to line their pockets as well.

100 years of Medical Robery (part 1, on the history of the AMA and establishing a medical monopoly)
Real Medical Freedom (part 2, which really gets into the history of insurance)

My grandparents' experience demonstrates the folly of government insurance. My grandmother came down with end-stage blood-cancer about a year ago. Left untreated, she probably would have lasted a month or two. But she went to her doctors at the Mayo clinic, who left nothing on the table in trying to kill her cancer. I have no idea how much medicare spent on Grandma's behalf, but it was at least $50,000. The last visit they took a bone-biopsy, and her marrow was 90% cancerous. She died one week after starting hospice care, six months after the initial diagnosis - which was exactly how long her doctor said she'd last without treatment.

So what'd the goverment's $50k -> $100k buy? 4 months? maybe? If grandma had known what she would have to go through, I think she'd've gone for hospice first.

My grandfather collapsed and went unresponsive about two years ago. A couple of weeks later they said, "he needs a pacemaker". Didn't cost him anything, but Medicare and his secondary insurance put out $100,000 on his behalf. A year and a half after that (6 months ago), he collapses and goes unresponsive again. "You had a seizure, take these pills". (His pacemaker has NEVER fired...) Grandpa's case is a big guessing game for his doctors, and they don't care what it costs, because the government is picking up the tab.

I won't get into my maternal grandparent's experience (another $200k in the last 2-3 years?)

Medicare only serves to keep people alive past their expiration date, make medical providers vastly wealthier than they would be otherwise, and makes medical care for the rest of us cost more than it should.

Which infers that it also sucks smart people into the medical field with the promise of wealth and status, people who maybe would've been engineers.

I wonder if the fact there is a cost of living increase expected by everyone leads to greater cost of living.

We saw relatively few increases in the cost of living throughout the 1800's; the cost of living actually tended to fall in periods of economic growth. But, after we established the Federal Reserve in 1913, we saw the dollar lose 95% of its value. I don't think people's expectations can explain even a small amount of the 20x increase in prices that have taken place over the last century, when expectations in the next to last century amounted to almost nothing.

A better explanation can be found here...

I would say just leave this LeonGeeste alone. He/She is the most annoying member of slashdot that I have come across, and I have been reading Slashdot before it was even named slashdot.

For those that do not know LeonGeeste very well, he is someone that is so bright that he got an engineering degree in 2 years and one semester straight from college while singlehandedly defeating a mental illness that he now believes is a personal preference for those with weak "willpower" and just prefer to be schizophrenic, depressed, psychotic or whatever. Oh, and he bases his thesis of mental illness as being a preference from an economic theory.

He speaks much more of economics than engineering topics including a much anticipated paper to be submitted to http://www.mises.org/, which is an economics site, primarily for academics. The link in his .sig http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531 is also a more economics based though.

This person also speaks of science in terms like "more rigorously proven", which makes no sense to anybody that has studied or actually done science.

I personally believe that this person is full of shit, and is some kind of kissass here on slashdot that is trying to fit in.

The courts and our legal system are not there to determine what the facts are or to dispense justice.

You list a bunch of problems you see with the court system, but instead of trying to come up with ways to fix these problems, your solution is to use a government agency in place of a court room whenever possible? The same logic could be used to argue that, instead of allowing courts to decide land rights, a government agency should dictate what land is owned by whom. That, my friend, is a very dangerous path to follow. In any society, matters of justice must be decided, and we depend on our court system to do that. Giving the State authority over certain types of property because you do not trust the court system, is simply running away from the real problem.

Its kind of like saying I own the air over that piece of property there. If you breath it you owe me money. If you want to use that analogy the why not say I own the air and the spectrum over my property. You are broadcasting through my property there for either stop it or pay me.

As far as owning air, it is in unlimited abundance and therefore should not be owned. Rothbard explains it well in Man, Economy, and State:

"In the first place, all means are scarce, i.e., limited with respect to the ends that they could possibly serve. If the means are in unlimited abundance, then they need not serve as the object of attention of any human action. For example, air in most situations is in unlimited abundance. It is therefore not a means and is not employed as a means to the fulfillment of ends. It need not be allocated, as [land] is, to the satisfaction of the more important ends, since it is sufficiently abundant for all human requirements. Air, then, though indispensable, is not a means, but a general condition of human action and human welfare."

Now, as far as the spectrum, the question is, do you own it? You certainly own land if you have, for instance, homesteaded it by building a house on it. But have you homesteaded any part of the spectrum? That is, have you broadcasted anything? If not, how can you have any claim of ownership?

Also, the fact that we only use geographical regions when allocating land rights, does not mean the spectrum should be divided up in the same way. As Rothbard explained in the quote from my initial post, "the task is to find the technological unit-i.e., the place of transmission, the distance of the wave, and the technological width of a clear channel-and then to allocate property rights to this particular technological unit." The reason the spectrum can and should be owned is because it is a means; a scarce element of the environment that can be altered to arrive at a human's ends.

The real question is why was the FCC created in the first place and why should it still exist?
Who is protecting whose rights/interests? (Think people with power.)

The following article highlights the history behind the creation of the FCC.
If you have the time I think most will benefit from its insights.

I know I did.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1662

It is long but an enjoyable piece.

The FCC is still needed. There is still a finite set of bandwidth available.

No, property rights are needed, but the FCC was never needed. Rothbard explains in this article how a private system would work:

"Another common objection to private property in the broadcast media is that private stations would interfere with each other's broadcasts, and that such widespread interference would virtually prevent any programs from being heard or seen. But this is as absurd an argument for nationalizing the airwaves as claiming that since people can drive their cars over other people's land this means that all cars-or land- must be nationalized. The problem, in either case, is for the courts to demarcate property titles carefully enough so that any invasion of another's property will be clear-cut and subject to prosecution. In the case of land titles, this process is clear enough. But the point is that the courts can apply a similar process of staking out property rights in other areas-whether it be in airwaves, in water, or in oil pools. In the case of airwaves, the task is to find the technological unit-i.e., the place of transmission, the distance of the wave, and the technological width of a clear channel-and then to allocate property rights to this particular technological unit. If radio station WXYZ, for example, is assigned a property right in broadcasting on 1500 kilocycles, plus or minus a certain width of kilocycles, for 200 miles around Detroit, then any station which subsequently beams a program into the Detroit area on this wavelength would be subject to prosecution for interference with property rights. If the courts pursue their task of demarking and defending property rights, then there is no more reason to expect continual invasions of such rights in this area than anywhere else."

"Most people believe that this is precisely the reason the airwaves were nationalized; that before the Radio Act of 1927, stations interfered with each other's signals and chaos ensued, and the federal government was finally forced to step in to bring order and make a radio industry feasible at last. But this is historical legend, not fact. The actual history is precisely the opposite. For when interference on the same channel began to occur, the injured party took the airwave aggressors into court, and the courts were beginning to bring order out of the chaos by very successfully applying the common law theory of property rights-in very many ways similar to the libertarian theory-to this new technological area. In short, the courts were beginning to assign property rights in the airwaves to their "homesteading" users. It was after the federal government saw the likelihood of this new extension of private property that it rushed in to nationalize the airwaves, using alleged chaos as the excuse."

Stephan "Against IP" Kinsella posted on this subject on the Mises Economics Blog. Libertarian discussion ensues.

Not every viewpoint agrees that the current implementation of licensure is optimal http://www.mises.org/story/1547

In fact, the monopoly may be related to high prices and other problems - to quote the Mises article:
AMA's initial drive to increase physician incomes was motivated by increasing competition from homeopaths .... This competition did serious damage to the incomes of AMA allopaths. In the year before AMA's founding, the New York Journal of Medicine stated that competition with homeopathy caused "a large pecuniary loss" to allopaths. In the same issue, the dean of the school of medicine at the University of Michigan railed against competition because it made treating sickness "arduous and un-remunerative."
Apart from reversing rapidly declining incomes, allopaths also wanted to rescue their public reputations, which quite reasonably suffered given their proficiency in killing patients through such crude practices as bloodletting ("exsanguination") or mercury injections (poisoning). A few allopaths desired adulation normally reserved for star athletes and actors. The Massachusetts Medical Society opined in 1848 that physicians should be "looked upon by the mass of mankind with a veneration almost superstitious."
"To accomplish the twin goals of artificially elevated incomes and worship by patients, AMA formulated a two-pronged strategy for the labor market for physicians.
First, use the coercive power of the state to limit the practices of physician competitors such as homeopaths, pharmacists, midwives, nurses, and later, chiropractors.
Second, significantly restrict entrance to the profession by restricting the number of approved medical schools in operation and thus the number of students admitted to those approved schools yearly."

As a side point, the review that says this isn't Mises's best book is correct. Socialism and Human Action are both MUCH better. Readers looking for a short book that covers the basic topics might want to read Economic Policy. If you are interested a discussion Nazism and Fascism, Omnipotent Government may be more up your alley.

As a side point, the review that says this isn't Mises's best book is correct. Socialism and Human Action are both MUCH better. Readers looking for a short book that covers the basic topics might want to read Economic Policy. If you are interested a discussion Nazism and Fascism, Omnipotent Government may be more up your alley.

As a side point, the review that says this isn't Mises's best book is correct. Socialism and Human Action are both MUCH better. Readers looking for a short book that covers the basic topics might want to read Economic Policy. If you are interested a discussion Nazism and Fascism, Omnipotent Government may be more up your alley.

See this: http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/anticap.asp Wow, a pro-capitalist book that was actually panned by the economist. It must be REALLY bad.

Either you have been brain washed by Marxists or you really have no understanding of economics. See this: http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/anticap.asp

1. Division of Labor
2. Stable Money
3. Price System
4. Lex, Rex ~ "rule of (uniform, abstract) law"
5. Natural Rights legal philosophy
6. nulla crimen, nulla poena sine lege ~ "no penalty without law"
7. basic principles of the Common Law:
   1. stare decisis
   2. right of property
   3. right of contract
   4. responsibility for tortious action
8. transferance of power by democratic process
9. limited government:
   • use of coercive power of government solely to prevent coercive acts by others
   • actions bound by the law

These are the traditional British/American institutions on which all of modern western civilization is based. Starting in Prussia in about 1850 a reaction against these institutions developed. Since then they have been attacked and seriously undermined by adherents to those reactionary views. Unfortunately, those views seem to dominate the public perception and are simultaniously presented as "traditional" and as "progressive".

It may be instructive to consider some of the relevent literature. Good starting points would be Mises's Socialism and Hayek's Constitution of Liberty. Mises's latter book Human Action and Hayek's follow up to Constitution, Law, Legislation, and Liberty are also relevent, but between Socialism and Constitution, the vast majority of the relevent works will have been cited.

If you want security, save a ton of money. That way, it doesn't matter whether you lost your job because of a boss's whim or because a hurricane hit your office building. No matter what happens, you'll be fine.

Of course, I know this is a very politicially incorrect thing to say for two reasons: 1) I'm suggesting that people at least try to take care of themselves and 2) I'm suggesting that people "hoard" their money.

People think I say these things to be mean...no, I say them because I practice my own philosophy. I have enough money saved up so that, even if I wasn't able to collect any unemployment insurance, I could continue my current life style, without changing a thing, for at least two years. I make 40k and have only been out of college for about a year now, but I have a high savings rate (about 50%) and live below my means.

It feels so great to know that if I was fired today, for any reason, I'd still be fine. That's why I recommend this life style...because I really wish that everyone could feel the same way as me. Only savings can do that for you...not government. Sure, government can make it extremely hard for employers to fire you, but restricting the freedom of capitalists only leads to unemployment, as we see in socialist countries. So, your job security only lasts until your business goes bankrupt, and then you join the unemployed crowd, and hope that the entity you've given all of your power to (the government) can fix the situation (start praying). What a horrible system...

With that in mind, it is baffling to me that free market advocates don't embrace OSS as a non-regulatory means of avoiding anti-competitive monopoly situations.

Many of us do indeed. I use F/OSS software as a present day example of the trend to rapidly commoditize products in a "free" market. Because there is low barrier-to-entry for programmers and programs, unlike licensed and regulated fields like electricians, innovation is exceptionally rapid. While certainly there are a lot of failures that might not have happened if programmers had to take a test and be certified before they could work in the field, the chaff rapidly falls and the gems, like Linux, KDE, Apache, Alan Cox, Marcelo Tosatti, are visible to all.

It is only the closed minds who cannot grasp the benefits of competition, or vested interests who do not want competition, who do not see the difference that a free market makes in every field and try to create or increase barriers and regulations.

One of the most potent examples of the quality of F/OSS products, in my experience, was when the blog at http://www.mises.org/ was rebuilt on Linux instead of Windows. Access times when from several seconds down to near instantaneous, reliability has been 100% since.

On the other hand, their use of .wmv video and Microsoft streaming formats baffles me. I think they believe "We started this way, let's stay consistant" or something like that. I guess they already bought the licenses...

Nothing that mplayer and xine cannot handle, though.

Bob-

Most of the time, you pay people considerably less than what their work is worth to you (*) because competition is driving down the price of labour.

Ah! From that, and your last paragraph about unions, it's clear that you believe the person who does the hiring has complete control over the process. Were that true, you would be correct with the rest of your position.

However, it's not. The fact is that employers have to attract and retain good employees. That means competition increases pay rates, benefits, working conditions.

That is not to say that all employers are at the mercy of their employees, or your contention that all employees are at the mercy of employers. Where competition is allowed, good workers make good money, and bad workers made bad.

it's incredibly difficult to work out how much someone's labour is worth to you

Not at all. I know what the task is worth to me, and you know what your time is worth to you. If you don't want the money, that's fine. If no one wants to work for what I believe the job is worth, then the job won't get done.

If someone is unemployed because no one has offered enough money for them to go to work, that is choice. If someone cannot get work because the jobs they offer to do are not worth the cost of minimum wage, that's coercion.

If I make 50 widgets for you on Wednesday, why will another 50 widgets on Thursday be worth more to you?

To change your example to what I said, with the SKILL you build by creating those 50 widgets, you now make 51. Your labor is now skilled where it was not before, your time is now more valuable to me than it was and you can demand more remuneration. This is why college graduates tend to make more money than non-graduates, but only if their degree is in a field in demand.

It's the wage which unions force employers to pay in order to avoid strikes.

As an employer, why do I have to hire union members? As an employee, why do I have to join a union? What you describe is not "a truly free society" at all. It is the political machine, the merchantilist alliance of Big Labor and Government that has allowed unions to avoid prosecution for racketeering and otherwise illegal monopoly practices. Just like Major League Baseball (tm).

http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap21sec7.asp

"3. Not every individual is able to perform any kind of labor. There are innate as well as acquired diversities in the abilities to perform certain types of work. The innate faculties required for certain types of work cannot be acquired by any training and schooling."

I think you aught to take a look at _Human Action_.

Bob-

For those of you who demand a more principled rigorous intelectual treatment of the general subject of IP, I'd recommend that you consider the Austrian view.

The thing is this comparison is extremely misleading.

Look, they averaged the costs overall production. They excluded development.

As a engineer ing this field let me tell you development costs are *huge*.

Moreover, some processors might cost $637 but those process cost a hell of a lot more than the average to manufacture... and that is the price you pay for the processors that come off the line with performance in the second or third standard deviation from the mean. There are not many of those processors (hard to make) + lots of demand => no shortages require high prices. The point being those those applications that can justify the cost are the ones that get the chip. This is about not wasting those chips on grandma's email computer while some scientist needs them--and to make that allocation in keeping with liberalism, i.e., without coercing people + corruption.

Anyone who was moved by this article should read
"Economic Calculation In The Socialist Commonwealth"
  http://www.mises.org/econcalc/econcalc.pdf

You need a little history lesson. The regulation of doctors is done through licensing -- the AMA. The AMA started in 1898. Their goal was to limit the number of medical schools and limit the number of students admitted to each medical school. They claimed this was to insure higher quality of health care, but its own clear effect was to limit the supply of doctors in America. Hopefully you know enough about economics to realize that limiting supply while demand stays constant will increase price. Anyways, by 1910 the government introduced legislation that closed all non-AMA medical schools. The number of medical schools in the US dropped from 163 in 1906 to 69 in 1944.

But wait, it gets better. Medical schools wanted to increase their class sizes in the great depression. They found themselves in the position of turning back qualified students even though they had space for them. Clearly the AMA was not going to like an increase in the supply of doctors. So what did they do? Well most (if not all) medical schools also operate or are associated with a hospital. The AMA threatened to revoke the licneses of their hospitals if they increased the number of medical students they admitted.

So you would think that all these high standards and licensing would at least increase the quality of health care in the US, right? Nope. America's cost per capita for health care is the highest in the world at $4662, yet we rank 42nd in life expectancy, 37th in infact mortality, and more than 100,000 patients die each year in hospitals from accidents and medication errors. Here's a great article on that.

You see, licensure basically creates a government backed monopoly. You have some group with a vested interest (current doctors) who are able to limit compettition (by saying who can offer medicine and how it must be offered) with the backing of the federal government. Microsoft's monopoly is nothing in comparison! There's no law against you installing Linux...

Finally, the other thing that regulation/licensure causes is a hinderance to technology. There was a great article from a guy at Harvard Business (couldn't find any free links to it) about how health care is ripe for disruptive technologies. It's an industry where specialization is more and more common. This requires much more education/training, but allows for higher profit margins. However, specialization is needed by less people. So what you wind up with is that most people see doctors who are way-over-qualified to treat whatever is wrong with them. Yet these doctor's must recover the costs of the extra education needed for their specialization. Hence the high cost of health care in the US. This kind of thing has been seen in countless other industries, and it usually leads to a disruptive technology. The disruptive tech is something that is not as good as what it competes against, but is good enough for most people and much cheaper. Over time the disruptive technology becomes better and better. Think Solaris vs. Linux if that helps.

So why haven't we seen something like this in health care? The answer is simple: licensure. People with vested interest are able to protect their position at the expense of the public. They can stop compettition that would otherwise increase the quality of life of the public and decrease the economic drain.

So you see, more government regulation may not be the answer. The people doing the regulating will have to have medical training. So we're right back in the position of people with a vested interest having even more people to control their industry. This hasn't worked in the past, so there's no reason why it would would now. If anything, it will likely limit supply (how many doctors) even more (in the name of increasing quality) and thus make doctors even less accountable for their actions (combine that with legislation to limit malpractice lawsuits.) It will also make sure

From a different site:
100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom

On a different note, I'm a big fan of Osteopathy (D.O.s, not M.D.s). It's kind of hard to find an osteopath who specializes in Osteopathy (most D.O.'s practices are no different than an M.D.'s), but if your structure is screwed up, it's certainly worth the trouble.

See Andrew Weil's _Spontaneous Healing_, Chapter 2 for his experience of the Miracle Healing Power of ten-fingered medicine.

From a different site:
100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom

On a different note, I'm a big fan of Osteopathy (D.O.s, not M.D.s). It's kind of hard to find an osteopath who specializes in Osteopathy (most D.O.'s practices are no different than an M.D.'s), but if your structure is screwed up, it's certainly worth the trouble.

See Andrew Weil's _Spontaneous Healing_, Chapter 2 for his experience of the Miracle Healing Power of ten-fingered medicine.

Standard Oil was not a monopoly, that was a myth. It created wealth for people of all incomes:

http://www.mises.org/story/388

The same is true for Microsoft -- creating wealth for not only the management and stockholders, but the entire region around them.

Most regulations do not come from trying to fix business, but trying to introduce controls on businesses so you can control them for personal gain.

http://www.mises.org/story/1852

http://www.mises.org/story/1749

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control =56&sortorder=articledate

Three decent articles about the effects of regulations.

It is a very convoluted issue, but I can tell you from experience (in manufacturing and retail, both my businesses) that regulations OFTEN are created in order to help a hidden third party. In the skateboard business that I own, I see numerous stores lobbying towns for helmet laws. "Helmet laws were created because kids were dying without them" might be said 20 years from now, when we forget who the store was that sold the helmets.

Standard Oil was not a monopoly, that was a myth. It created wealth for people of all incomes:

http://www.mises.org/story/388

The same is true for Microsoft -- creating wealth for not only the management and stockholders, but the entire region around them.

Most regulations do not come from trying to fix business, but trying to introduce controls on businesses so you can control them for personal gain.

http://www.mises.org/story/1852

http://www.mises.org/story/1749

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control =56&sortorder=articledate

Three decent articles about the effects of regulations.

It is a very convoluted issue, but I can tell you from experience (in manufacturing and retail, both my businesses) that regulations OFTEN are created in order to help a hidden third party. In the skateboard business that I own, I see numerous stores lobbying towns for helmet laws. "Helmet laws were created because kids were dying without them" might be said 20 years from now, when we forget who the store was that sold the helmets.

Standard Oil was not a monopoly, that was a myth. It created wealth for people of all incomes:

http://www.mises.org/story/388

The same is true for Microsoft -- creating wealth for not only the management and stockholders, but the entire region around them.

Most regulations do not come from trying to fix business, but trying to introduce controls on businesses so you can control them for personal gain.

http://www.mises.org/story/1852

http://www.mises.org/story/1749

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control =56&sortorder=articledate

Three decent articles about the effects of regulations.

It is a very convoluted issue, but I can tell you from experience (in manufacturing and retail, both my businesses) that regulations OFTEN are created in order to help a hidden third party. In the skateboard business that I own, I see numerous stores lobbying towns for helmet laws. "Helmet laws were created because kids were dying without them" might be said 20 years from now, when we forget who the store was that sold the helmets.

Standard Oil was not a monopoly, that was a myth. It created wealth for people of all incomes:

http://www.mises.org/story/388

The same is true for Microsoft -- creating wealth for not only the management and stockholders, but the entire region around them.

Most regulations do not come from trying to fix business, but trying to introduce controls on businesses so you can control them for personal gain.

http://www.mises.org/story/1852

http://www.mises.org/story/1749

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control =56&sortorder=articledate

Three decent articles about the effects of regulations.

It is a very convoluted issue, but I can tell you from experience (in manufacturing and retail, both my businesses) that regulations OFTEN are created in order to help a hidden third party. In the skateboard business that I own, I see numerous stores lobbying towns for helmet laws. "Helmet laws were created because kids were dying without them" might be said 20 years from now, when we forget who the store was that sold the helmets.

There has been so much written on this subject it's ridiculous. I'm not surprised you've never heard about the volumes, however, because the State doesn't want you to know they exist. You won't find them in school libraries.

You can start with Murrey Rothbard's _The Ethics of Liberty_, http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

or you could just jump right into the entire category of "Anarchy" that is available on the Mises.org web site: http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=subjec t&Id=123

The files for Roderick T. Long are some of the most specific for anarchy, http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=author &Id=383

Even if you decide that anarchy, that is, "an-archy = without rulers", isn't for you, at least you can know better what questions you have that haven't already been answered.

I look forward to maybe seeing you ask some of those questions in the Mises blog, always an interesting place to discuss such issues and they welcome questions.

Bob-

There has been so much written on this subject it's ridiculous. I'm not surprised you've never heard about the volumes, however, because the State doesn't want you to know they exist. You won't find them in school libraries.

You can start with Murrey Rothbard's _The Ethics of Liberty_, http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

or you could just jump right into the entire category of "Anarchy" that is available on the Mises.org web site: http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=subjec t&Id=123

The files for Roderick T. Long are some of the most specific for anarchy, http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=author &Id=383

Even if you decide that anarchy, that is, "an-archy = without rulers", isn't for you, at least you can know better what questions you have that haven't already been answered.

I look forward to maybe seeing you ask some of those questions in the Mises blog, always an interesting place to discuss such issues and they welcome questions.

Bob-

There has been so much written on this subject it's ridiculous. I'm not surprised you've never heard about the volumes, however, because the State doesn't want you to know they exist. You won't find them in school libraries.

You can start with Murrey Rothbard's _The Ethics of Liberty_, http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

or you could just jump right into the entire category of "Anarchy" that is available on the Mises.org web site: http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=subjec t&Id=123

The files for Roderick T. Long are some of the most specific for anarchy, http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=author &Id=383

Even if you decide that anarchy, that is, "an-archy = without rulers", isn't for you, at least you can know better what questions you have that haven't already been answered.

I look forward to maybe seeing you ask some of those questions in the Mises blog, always an interesting place to discuss such issues and they welcome questions.

Bob-

Diamonds don't have much value. Any monetary value attributed to diamonds are artificially created by the De Beers Diamond cartel by withholding 90% of the diamonds they mine and storing them away. The value of diamonds had dropped precipitously until De Beers took control. Recently, they may be experiencing problems with their cartel. http://www.mises.org/econsense/ch91.asp

The content of that article does not support its title. Perhaps if the title were "Price gouging saves rich people's lives" it might be accurate, (albeit still little more than sophistry).

There's also this gem in the conclusion:

"Price gouging" is nothing more than charging what the market will bear. If that's immoral, then all market adjustment to changing circumstances is "immoral," and markets per se are immoral. But that is not the case.

He's half right - market's aren't immoral, they're amoral. They're simply a tool that can be used for moral or immoral activities - and price-gouging in the face of natural disasters is most certain an immoral activity.

Actually, after explaining their particular deviations from the dogma, they all disappeared after a few questions leaving them unanswered. I wonder why.

The differences between reality and the bullshit you';ve been posting here is pretty major-- so when you lecture us about what libertarians believe, you should expect to be called for the idiot you're making yourself out to be.

Perhaps if you paused your incessant stream of spittle and saliva bubbles, you would notice that none of these gentlemen were capable of answering some rather basic questions in regards to the whole core of your argument, that is that free market is magically self-regulating. And now you can return to your regularly scheduled ranting and raving.

Go learn some freaking economics... you can start with: "price gouging saves lives" http://www.mises.org/story/1593

No thank you, I will rather stick to old, boring, sane plain economics. I will leave the "Freaking" one to maniacs like you, where you can espouse virtues of price gouging. To be more effective, I propose that you do that at one of the gas stations in Lousiana. Your subsequent funeral will be fitting a true Libertarian: you will be dumped into a river since noone will see it profitable to dig a hole for you.

No, you just have no clue what libertarianism is. And so you made stuff up, or believed what some non-libertarian told you.

Now that you're talking to actual libertarians, they are shooting you down left and right.

Some libertarians are minarchists and some are anarchochapitalists, but the difference is really minor. The difference with objectivists is over only a few issues.

The differences between reality and the bullshit you';ve been posting here is pretty major-- so when you lecture us about what libertarians believe, you should expect to be called for the idiot you're making yourself out to be.

Go learn some freaking economics... you can start with:
"price gouging saves lives" http://www.mises.org/story/1593

Here's an easy way to think about it: Just to keep the numbers easy to work with, imagine a society that demands 10 barrels of oil every hour, and each barrel sells for $50.

Now, suppose that it is suddenly revealed to the market that, for the next few months, the supply of oil will only be 5 barrels of oil every hour. What does this mean? Well, the 5 barrels of oil each hour are going to be bid up by the consumers. $100, $200, $500...it all depends on how badly the consumers want the barrels. This is exactly what you want; higher prices are how the free market rations a finite supply of goods. Prices set by supply and demand ensure that those 5 barrels will be used wisely, because the ones who need the barrels the most will be the ones willing to pay the most.

There is nothing wrong with the retailer making a profit that is far higher than normal. Really, that is the market's way of saying, "Thanks for selling that good to me when I needed it the most! If you hadn't started this business, there would be even less supply for consumers right now." In other words, a high price is a reward to retailers for correctly predicting consumer demand.

So, prices are set by supply and demand, and not by how much it cost the retailer to purchase the barrel from the producer. Once again, this is a good thing, because you want the rationing to begin as soon as new information enters the market. Going back to the original example, if the market is currently providing 10 barrels per hour, but we just found out that tomorrow there will only be 5 barrels per hour, should we wait until tomorrow to start conserving? Of course not! The market should start conserving as soon as new information comes in. Thus, the price should change as soon as new information comes in as well.

Still not convinced? Check out this, it explains the concepts better than I can.

No, an anarcho-capitalist, such as myself, would not say that these people brought it on themselves or that we shouldn't give them aid. But anarcho-capitalists would also say that you can't fix a problem if you don't understand what caused it.

As it explains in this article, the government had a hand in the Great Flood of 1927. Why is that? Because, instead of encouraging men to rely on themselves and their local community to build flood control systems, we had decided to put our government in charge of centrally planning our flood control system. The government's Army Corps of Engineers, unrestricted by the smaller resources of a local community, chose a system that requires huge capital and maintenance expenses. So, when ever the government's budget is tight, the system becomes underfunded and the risk of disaster increases. The common man will not realize this until it's too late, because he has been taught to rely on the government to allocate resources. Also, the government encourages the common man to build in high-risk areas, because the government backs flood insurance and provides flood relief.

So, we should provide immediate assistance, but we should not repeat the mistakes of the past. We should no longer subsidize flood insurance or relief, and we should also privatize our flood control system; it's simply too important to be left to the government.

It was interesting to see in that blog that what I've heard elsewhere is confirmed: Police are doing much of the looting.

Its unfortunate that government sweeps in during disasters and starts making mandates that make things worse. Like prohibitions against price "gauging". What, they htink things get cheaper when the infrastructure is destroyed?

Gauging actually helps-- it brings in more supply to service that demand, and ultimately prices go down FASTER when the free market is allowed.

Here's an economists take on the issue:
Price Gauging saves lives: http://www.mises.org/story/1593
And another: http://www.lewrockwell.com/akers/akers16.html

"Note that Old Europe was starkly divided on class lines, and life generally sucked for all but the top echelon of society."

Completely irrelevant.

"I don't know anything about Ancient Ireland, but did you notice that it isn't around anymore?"

An idiotic statement. No society has lasted from the dawn of mankind until present. Period. So this observation is meaningless. The US won't be around 1000 years from now either; Ancient Rome, Egypt, or Greece aren't around either. So what? 1000 years to the credit of Ancient Ireland is pretty significant.

Also, saying "it isn't around anymore" is a fallicious argument. Just because a given system "isn't anymore" doesn't mean it isn't the best possible system of political organization.

All States are evil by definition: they tax (rob) and use violence to prevent competition. You also seem to be willfully ignornat of the reality of States: they allow individuals within them to externalize the costs of aggression, hence these individuals are more aggressive, ceteris paribus. It is an institutional problems of all States, although more-so in some than others (e.g., it is particularly problematic in Democracy, where rulers are only temporary, hence the tragedy of the commons exists from their perspective, as they have no incentive to bother with preserving anything, but only the expropriate as much as possible while they're in office).

"Also, why do you have the right to your property. Any inherent reason? I'm sure most communists would disagree."

You have the right to your property because you homesteaded it, and because that is the only non-arbitrary way to have property. The communist ideaology would mean death for mankind, as it would prevent the ownership of property, which is essential for survival. Capital could never be accumulated -- hence no long-term savings could occur, nor any planning for the future -- without private property ownership. As for property not homesteaded by the current owner, ownership can also be justified by voluntary exchanges from original homesteaders, or so-on down the line.

As for ultimate arguments for the justification of self-ownership and private property rights (homesteading), see Hans Hoppe's argumentation ethics. Also see Rothbard, Murray. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Creed (search for Property Rights, case-sensitive).

"Anyway, you agree to our laws by living here. If you don't like it, leave, is a very valid sentiment. The only reason it wouldn't be is if this was some sort of state that prevented people from leaving."

That's pure BS. The argument that anything is justified so-long as emigration isn't restricted is pure and complete BS, and completely fails to understand what justice is. Anyone who could say such either has no conception of justice, or isn't thinking about what the implications of what he's saying. What you're saying is that if me and my neighbors have a peaceful neighborhood, and some mafia lord moves in and aggresses against us, "if we don't like it, we have to leave" otherwise we have no cause to complain. In the current context, your statement is fallicious, as it assumes what it's trying to prove: that the State is justified. If you didn't assume that the State was justified in the first place, you couldn't say, "if you don't like it, leave".

According to your "logic", somehow, Nazi Germany would have been justified if only Hitler had let the Jews leave. That is, if he gave them the choice to "leave or be exterminated". Of course, such an ultimatum would completely violate their property rights. It's like me coming into your house and saying, "If you leave, I won't murder you. If you stay, I will". According to your argument, somehow, there is nothing wrong with this.

Without government direction and organization, it would take whatever volunteer goodwill organizations that go down there a lot longer to coordinate their efforts, and would be much less effective.

Please read the following:

In a Crisis, Markets More than Ever

I don't have the "right" to my social status -- and that is completely irrelevant for my arguemnt; I do, however, have the right to my property. As for the need for roads, safe water, law, etc, all of this can be provided by the free market, and in fact has been provided in the past, before big businessmen -- doomed to failing in free-market attempts to cartelize the industries -- turned to government to accomplish the task.

Private roads were provided in Old Europe, known as turnpikes. On this topic, see the Walter Block's publications CV, specifically Transportation Systems section. Free-market justice was provided -- absent a State -- in Ancient Iceland and Ancient Ireland. Ancient Ireland existed as a peaceful, and intellectually advanced, stateless society for almost a thousand years. In terms of respect for women's rights, their society was centuries ahead of its time. Regarding a general introduction to the argument for a statless libertarian society, see Rothbard, Murray. For a New Liberty .

Regarding a the desireability of States, no we do not want to "have one of these". In the past century, States have murdered 174 million of their own people during peacetime. That is, these are the number of people murdered in State-sponsored democide. Another 36 million people have been murdered by wars. That's 200 million people murdered by States.

Then there's DDT. See Englund, Eric. The Mosquito: Environmentalism's Weapon of Mass Destruction . Every year, 2.7 million people die of malaria; all of this is prevantable, provided the use of DDT, which is cheap and effective. Despite that, States have banned it.

And those are only the most obvious cases. There's also all of the people who die because of road-socialism (the over-use of roads and poor management, due to the inability to perform economic calculation when there is no private property, and the lack of incentives).

Absent States, these murders would not have occured. It isn't profitable on the free market to murder hundreds of millions of people. And anyone attempting to commit mass-murder in a private libertarian society, wouldn't be able to externalize the costs of his aggression onto others by taxing. He'd have to fund it himself. Obviously, one is much more likely to engage in aggressive action if one faces hardly no consequences of such actions. E.g., G.W. Bush does not -- in any significant way -- pay the price of war; he doesn't experience the death, nor is he burdened by its financing.

PS: Re, "if you don't like it, leave" -- a childish, silly and fallicious argument. A mafia organization invades your neighborhood, continually expropriates your property, and commits violence, and the response to any protest is "if you don't like it leave". That presumes the criminal -- in my example, the mafia members, representative of the State -- has a right to be there, and that you don't. Mere rhetoric.

I don't have the "right" to my social status -- and that is completely irrelevant for my arguemnt; I do, however, have the right to my property. As for the need for roads, safe water, law, etc, all of this can be provided by the free market, and in fact has been provided in the past, before big businessmen -- doomed to failing in free-market attempts to cartelize the industries -- turned to government to accomplish the task.

Private roads were provided in Old Europe, known as turnpikes. On this topic, see the Walter Block's publications CV, specifically Transportation Systems section. Free-market justice was provided -- absent a State -- in Ancient Iceland and Ancient Ireland. Ancient Ireland existed as a peaceful, and intellectually advanced, stateless society for almost a thousand years. In terms of respect for women's rights, their society was centuries ahead of its time. Regarding a general introduction to the argument for a statless libertarian society, see Rothbard, Murray. For a New Liberty .

Regarding a the desireability of States, no we do not want to "have one of these". In the past century, States have murdered 174 million of their own people during peacetime. That is, these are the number of people murdered in State-sponsored democide. Another 36 million people have been murdered by wars. That's 200 million people murdered by States.

Then there's DDT. See Englund, Eric. The Mosquito: Environmentalism's Weapon of Mass Destruction . Every year, 2.7 million people die of malaria; all of this is prevantable, provided the use of DDT, which is cheap and effective. Despite that, States have banned it.

And those are only the most obvious cases. There's also all of the people who die because of road-socialism (the over-use of roads and poor management, due to the inability to perform economic calculation when there is no private property, and the lack of incentives).

Absent States, these murders would not have occured. It isn't profitable on the free market to murder hundreds of millions of people. And anyone attempting to commit mass-murder in a private libertarian society, wouldn't be able to externalize the costs of his aggression onto others by taxing. He'd have to fund it himself. Obviously, one is much more likely to engage in aggressive action if one faces hardly no consequences of such actions. E.g., G.W. Bush does not -- in any significant way -- pay the price of war; he doesn't experience the death, nor is he burdened by its financing.

PS: Re, "if you don't like it, leave" -- a childish, silly and fallicious argument. A mafia organization invades your neighborhood, continually expropriates your property, and commits violence, and the response to any protest is "if you don't like it leave". That presumes the criminal -- in my example, the mafia members, representative of the State -- has a right to be there, and that you don't. Mere rhetoric.

I don't have the "right" to my social status -- and that is completely irrelevant for my arguemnt; I do, however, have the right to my property. As for the need for roads, safe water, law, etc, all of this can be provided by the free market, and in fact has been provided in the past, before big businessmen -- doomed to failing in free-market attempts to cartelize the industries -- turned to government to accomplish the task.

Private roads were provided in Old Europe, known as turnpikes. On this topic, see the Walter Block's publications CV, specifically Transportation Systems section. Free-market justice was provided -- absent a State -- in Ancient Iceland and Ancient Ireland. Ancient Ireland existed as a peaceful, and intellectually advanced, stateless society for almost a thousand years. In terms of respect for women's rights, their society was centuries ahead of its time. Regarding a general introduction to the argument for a statless libertarian society, see Rothbard, Murray. For a New Liberty .

Regarding a the desireability of States, no we do not want to "have one of these". In the past century, States have murdered 174 million of their own people during peacetime. That is, these are the number of people murdered in State-sponsored democide. Another 36 million people have been murdered by wars. That's 200 million people murdered by States.

Then there's DDT. See Englund, Eric. The Mosquito: Environmentalism's Weapon of Mass Destruction . Every year, 2.7 million people die of malaria; all of this is prevantable, provided the use of DDT, which is cheap and effective. Despite that, States have banned it.

And those are only the most obvious cases. There's also all of the people who die because of road-socialism (the over-use of roads and poor management, due to the inability to perform economic calculation when there is no private property, and the lack of incentives).

Absent States, these murders would not have occured. It isn't profitable on the free market to murder hundreds of millions of people. And anyone attempting to commit mass-murder in a private libertarian society, wouldn't be able to externalize the costs of his aggression onto others by taxing. He'd have to fund it himself. Obviously, one is much more likely to engage in aggressive action if one faces hardly no consequences of such actions. E.g., G.W. Bush does not -- in any significant way -- pay the price of war; he doesn't experience the death, nor is he burdened by its financing.

PS: Re, "if you don't like it, leave" -- a childish, silly and fallicious argument. A mafia organization invades your neighborhood, continually expropriates your property, and commits violence, and the response to any protest is "if you don't like it leave". That presumes the criminal -- in my example, the mafia members, representative of the State -- has a right to be there, and that you don't. Mere rhetoric.

.
You mix some truths with boogey man stories and scare tactics - making it hard for people to discern whether you know what you're talking about or not.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MoneySupply.htm l

http://www.mises.org/story/1837

We can thus conclude that the key-determining factor in the setting of US interest rates is the amount of US excess money supply. Over time this excess is predominantly driven by the supply of money, which is set in motion by the Fed's monetary policies. In this respect the Chinese factor is completely irrelevant as far as US interest rate determination is concerned. So if the economy were to fall into a recession on account of a bursting of the housing bubble we should blame the Fed for that and not falsely point the finger at China.

the fact that demand for oil equates to the demand for US buck (an artificial link maintained by the US through its unbelievable military might)

Pardon? "Unbelievable Military Might"? In the research I do, it's all "currency of choice", no one's being forced to trade for oil in USD. I know the company I work for merely *chooses* to price our products in USD for convenience. I think you've got your economics ass backwards. You should be relating the power of the dollar to the supply of oil. The more powerful the dollar, the more drilling there is for oil, the more oil there is for everyone else. The opposite also holds true. (http://www.mees.com/postedarticles/oped/a47n33d01 .htm - http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P100650.asp) ...and of course oil being used so intensively to GENERATE products and deliver them to market, the lack of availability and high price of oil itself could cause bad things.

The way in which oil/USD *might* be linked is that if everyone else stops using USD for oil right now and the link between USD deflation and oil availability is severed it means that more resources will be available to drill for oil and more oil (should) be available. Which will actual DECREASE the economic problems.

People don't "lose freedom" by working for companies: it was a voluntary choice. What you're describing -- the syndicate form of organization -- is one (usually foolish) form of organization that could be laid out in a corporate charter. Any arrangement that people enter into voluntarily -- of their own free will -- is compatible with freedom. A syndicate just happens to be a very foolish form of organization. See Mises, Ludwig von. Syndicalism and Corporatism.

Regarding the argument of some that it is reasonable for women to be hostile to this, due to past injustices...Past injustices don't justify a paranoid, unintellectual reaction to studies. Either this is true, or it isn't.

I'd also note that many of the things you describe as "rights", aren't or shouldn't be. "The right to vote" is newspeak for "the 'right' to aggress against others" (namely, to openly express and act upon one's desire to take that which they haven't earned). Regarding discrimination in the workplace, no-one has the "right" to work at a specific company. I'd argue, however, that there are alot of managers who would like nothing more than to have all female employees. Furthermore, to the extent that women are discriminated against* in the workplace, this creates a profit opportunity for entrepreneurs willing to hire them at lower wages.

On a related argument, a professor of mine gave a very interesting lecture, for which I have notes, discussing the wage-gap between men and women and the glass ceiling. He argues that the "wage gap" (women receiving 70% the pay of men) is really nothing more than the result of the fact that women (not men) get pregnant, and tend to thus take time off and stay at home to be parents. When you look at never-married men vs. never-married women, and teenaged boys vs. teenaged girls, there is no statistically significant wage-gap.

As regards the glass-ceiling, he argues this is due to a difference in the dispersions of IQ among men and women. He argues that although the average IQ of men and women may be the same, the distribution for women is more concentrated on the mean, while the distribution for men is less concentrated on the mean (fatter tails). That is, there are fewer very dumb or very smart women, and more very dumb or very smart men. Likewise with regards to other social characteristics, such as aggression. If you look at the highest peaks of many areas -- chess, business, science, etc -- they are dominated by men; however, you also see prisons and insane-asylums overwhelmingly occupied by men.

The reason for this is that men are expendable, and women are not. If 99% of the female population dies out, the human race is in severe trouble; if 99% of the male population dies out, the remaining 1% (provided adequate fecundity and stamina) can relatively quickly repopulate.

Interestingly, someone else brought up the issue of "emotional quotient" or "EQ". From their description of it, it seems to measure maturity, the ability to sacrafice immediate gratification for more long-term gratification. As emotional intelligence is "an awareness of and ability to manage emotions and create motivation", this would seem to be an appropriate characterization of part of the issue. Economists -- particularly those of the Austrian school -- call this "time-preference". Lower time-preferences are civilizing forces, and lead to success. Criminals and children, for example, are characterized by high time-preference (a rapist is someone who simply can't wait; children will give up $1000 tomorrow for $1 today; etc). I don't see why this doesn't fall under the rubric of general "intelligence".

* The term "discriminate" here is used in the very narrow sense, in that being female is considered as a negative aspect, all else equal. In reality, all private property, and every choice of free people, is based on discrimination.

Why don't you spell out exactly how an act of voluntary association -- for example an Indian programmer contracting to perform labor for an American business -- can possibly represent enslavement? While you're at it, please explain why your opinion matters more than the actual two parties which engaged in voluntary trade?

Sounds like you need to go back to pre-school and learn the difference between voluntary association and force. Have you ever considered that maybe it's none of your god damn business who engages in voluntary trade, how, or when?

When you are ready to grow up, please refer to this article and realize that the #1 cause of outsourcing is your own bloated, wasteful, corrupt government and the insane cost of doing business that it imposes on its economy.

I am pleased that a "review" of the DiLorenzo book I recommended to you is online:

http://www.mises.org/story/1887

Even just in the review, many of the issues you raise are addressed.

It's not that I disagree that these are important issues, I disagree that coercive government intervention, regulation and operation through political expediency is in any way "better" than what results when interested individuals come together to solve the problems.

Bob-

To bring this back on the original topic a little. The article is by someone at the Von Mises Institute. Ludwig Von Mises is best known for his books demonstrating that socialist and communist systems have an inherent tendancy to end up controlled by power-hungry groups and individuals. He predicted the results of socialist policies years before they came to pass, because he had been exposed to them as an economist in Austria before they become academically popular worldwide.

Essentially, the personal qualities that get you promoted fastest in a socialist government also happen to be the personal qualities that lead someone to set themselves up as a dictator or at best an oligarchy.

The problem with "true socialism" is that due to human nature, it's not stable. It quickly devolves into "true totalitarianism" and has every time it's been tried on any national scale.

As for the Nazi's, you know the "National Socialist German Workers Party", they might have been in competition with the Russian Communists, but that doesn't mean they weren't also Socialists, not some sort of idealogical opposite. Sure, they had a slightly different agenda and wanted their group to be in charge instead, but it wasn't anything like Laissez-faire economics, which WOULD be the opposite of them and the Russians at the time.

Lastly, it's not a coincidence that the countries listed as having the most economic freedom every year also happen to have the highest economic growth rates and the ones at the bottom of the list have the lowest (or even mostly negative) growth rates.

You have to literally ignore history in order to make any sort of case that socialism is the solution to starvation instead of the primary current cause of starvation in the world.

I suppose I must have explained it badly. The system I was attempting to describe would have existed, had the government not intervened. From this article:

And in the fall of 1926 the precedent for defining and defending those rights had been established in an Illinois court: Tribune Co. v. Oak Leaves Broadcasting Station. Writes Hazlett, "the classic interference problem was encountered, litigated, and overcome, using no more than existing common-law precedent."

The Chicago Daily Tribune, calling itself WGN"World's Greatest Newspaper"broadcast entertainment as a means of marketing its publication: each day's edition listed that evening's programming.

WGN filed a complaint in state court against another radio station, Oak Leaves, which had begun broadcasting in an adjacent wavelength. WGN claimed that it was necessary to maintain at least a fifty-kilocycle separation between stations located within 100 miles of each other. They accused the Oak Leaves station of injuring their lawfully acquired business property.

Chancellor Francis S. Wilson decided the case wholly within the legal tradition of property rights in common resources. His landmark decision, which established homesteading rights in "the ether," found precedent in western water rights, among other established property traditions. Wilson concluded the court was "compelled to recognize rights which have been acquired by reason of the outlay and expenditure of money and the investment of time. . . . We are of the further opinion that, under the circumstances in this case, priority of time creates a superiority in right. . . ."[11]

So the official history has it exactly backwards. The free market didn't create a crisis that the government solved. The government created the crisis and the assignment of property rights was about to fix it. And as soon as the government realized this, they rushed in to keep the private solution from happening:

The Congress responded to Oak Leaves instantly. After years of debate and delay on a radio law, both houses jumped to pass a December 1926 resolution stating that no private rights to ether would be recognized as valid, mandating that broadcasters immediately sign waivers relinquishing all rights, and disclaiming any vested interests. The power to require such was the interstate commerce clause, but the motive was that Congress was nervous that spectrum allocation would soon be a matter of private law.

So, no, I do not think the system I described is too simple or unworkable or even a knee jerk reaction. I have worked with someone who writes broadcast engineering software, and I saw the lengths he had to go to in order to appease the FCC. Basically, they always expect you to bend over backwards, rather than meeting you half-way, because what motivation do they have, as a government agency, to make the process easy? Trust me, the system would be far, far better if we used private property instead of the FCC.

While I won't defend the author's knowledge of technology, I will defend the viewpoint that the FCC should be abolished. Let me quote from a Mises article that another slashdotter mentioned to help illustrate this:

The rationale Roosevelt and his acolytes employed to justify the creation of the FCC has been reiterated for decades. According to the boosters of the 1934 Federal Communications Act, the radio spectrum was a limited resource. It also crossed state borders. As such, it was necessary and appropriate that the federal government own the airwaves. As argued by the Roosevelt Administration, the broadcast spectrum was, by its nature, a public good, and it was in the public interest that Washington regulate its use, thus avoiding potential private business conflicts.

Strangely, for other limited resources such as land and water, the federal government wasn't needed as a referee. Somehow, people worked out these claims just fine on local and state levels. Within certain parameters, paper was a limited (though slowly renewable) resource. There were only a finite number of useable trees in the United States in 1934, but, for some reason, this scarcity was not used as a rationale for the regulation of newspaper and book content. Perhaps that was because the American public would have seen it as an abridgement of the First Amendment, just as they should have seen the federal takeover of the broadcast spectrum as the unconstitutional action that it was.

As it explains in the above, you don't need the Federal government in order to have a system of property rights for land and water. It's just common sense that you shouldn't invade someone else's property. When invasion does occur, the matter is addressed in court.

There's no reason the spectrum can't be controlled the same way. If someone interferes with a frequency that you're using, take them to court. The court will take into account the current limitations of technology when it rules. It might say, "Person A and person B both want to use frequency N, but person A will be granted the right to use it because A was there first. B may use frequency N + M, where M is a number that is great enough such that B's usage won't affect person A." If all the frequencies are in use, then the court will tell person B that he needs to purchase a frequency from someone if he wants to be able to use it. There you go, a system created on the fly, and one that can be adjusted by the courts whenever technology changes and a new case is brought to court.

Unlike the FCC, this system is local and there is no bureaucracy. The courts handle all the rules, treating each case as a disagreement between two parties, rather than society granting a privelege to someone. There is no censorship, because no one will hear bad words unless they intercept someone's frequency with a special device called a radio. If this device is used in an open area and bad words start coming out of it, the person who turned his radio to that frequency should be blamed for "polluting" the air. It's crazy to blame the broadcaster, because he has no control over who chooses to intercept his frequency.