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If we have to choose between the evils of various forms of The State, the least harmful form would most likely be monarchy. See Democracy: The God That Failed

If we have to choose between the evils of various forms of The State, the least harmful form would most likely be monarchy. See Democracy: The God That Failed

Yes! Part of the solution to this problem is to eliminate any and all federal programs for which the federal government has no power to pay for or collect for! Funding for the arts, funding for education of any kind. Great first step. Keep rolling them!

Eliminate the FBI, CIA, FCC, FDA, EPA, IRS, FRB, FDIC, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FAA, NRC, FERC, INS, OSHA, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, CPSC, NIH, NASA, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal college aid grants and loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and more! None of these programs are Constitutionally acceptable, and the only way we'll return to a truly booming country is to make sure that our duly elected officials abide by their oath to uphold the Constitution. There is only one that I know of who truly does that. Dr. Ron Paul has shown that he believes in the Constitution, and I believe he has never voted for an unconstitutional bill or legislative measure.

I would love to see a federal government that will never believe in interventionism again!

Thanks for voting. Democrat? Republican? All the same. The Constitution limits our Congress to certain enumerated rights. Copyright and anti-trust regulation ARE within those enumerated rights, but we've given them so many other rights (health care, FBI, FDA, FCC, etc) that they can now pass any law, any time, even if the laws are obviously pork for their friends.

This is the problem with democracy. If 49 people disagree with 51, the 49 people lose. Everyone's a loser. Stop voting for authoritarian parties (Democrats, Republicans, Greens) and start voting for parties who actually want to downsize DC.

Thanks for voting. Democrat? Republican? All the same. The Constitution limits our Congress to certain enumerated rights. Copyright and anti-trust regulation ARE within those enumerated rights, but we've given them so many other rights (health care, FBI, FDA, FCC, etc) that they can now pass any law, any time, even if the laws are obviously pork for their friends.

This is the problem with democracy. If 49 people disagree with 51, the 49 people lose. Everyone's a loser. Stop voting for authoritarian parties (Democrats, Republicans, Greens) and start voting for parties who actually want to downsize DC.

Neither claim gets him off the hook. The simple fact is that he is allowing individuals to pollute your property while on his. He has no more right to allow others to pollute your property while on his property than he does to pollute your property himself. His choices are simple: (1) Compensate you accordingly; (2) Pay to have your property de-polluted; (3) Erect a barrier around his road, making it a tunnel, so that the surrounding ground is not polluted; (4) Not allow certain individuals to drive on his road, who will then pressure their car companies; (5) Anything else he can think of to solve the situation.

Note: An alternate libertarian view, contradictory to my own in some ways, is presented here (Christian viewpoint).

what if there was no clear source of the pollution? What if there was no one thing I could point my finger at and say "that is the source of the pollution"? Who would I sue then? My property is being damaged by pollution, and I have no idea who's doing it.

In that case, you can't even prove that the pollution is being caused by another person, so you can't hold anyone else liable for it. You need to establish liability to hold someone else accountable. It should be noted that State-mandated action in this case solves nothing, as in the case you mention, the source of pollution is unknown. Even more so than in other cases, in the case you mention, State-mandated action is indeed trying to pin the asses tail while blindfolded.

I am not maintaining that an the unhampered free market is a perfect Elysia. Indeed, it's part of the challenge in life that various free-market companies would come about trying to solve various problems, some successful, other's not. The search for perfection is, among other things, pointless for living beings -- for perfection can only be found in death, as perfection implies a state in which nothing changes (as any change would detract from perfection).

(2) A more reasonable course of action would be to sue the road-owner, for allowing those on his property to pollute your property. Road owners would then place pressure on car-owners to pollute less, who would in turn place pressure on car-manufacturer's to make cars that pollute less. For example, a court may rule that the road owner either stop those on it's property from polluting yours, or pay $X for every Y units of pollution on your property. The road owner would then likely take such a course of action as to charge those who use cars that pollute more higher fees for use of that road.

If you haven't already read it, Rothbard's discussion of Pollution is a good explanation of how the current system solves nothing and how privatization and enforcement of property rights would be better. (search for "All right: Even if we concede that full private property").

(2) A more reasonable course of action would be to sue the road-owner, for allowing those on his property to pollute your property. Road owners would then place pressure on car-owners to pollute less, who would in turn place pressure on car-manufacturer's to make cars that pollute less. For example, a court may rule that the road owner either stop those on it's property from polluting yours, or pay $X for every Y units of pollution on your property. The road owner would then likely take such a course of action as to charge those who use cars that pollute more higher fees for use of that road.

If you haven't already read it, Rothbard's discussion of Pollution is a good explanation of how the current system solves nothing and how privatization and enforcement of property rights would be better. (search for "All right: Even if we concede that full private property").

By the way, the now-common definition of communism includes what I was referring to.

Socialism would also apply.

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

In regards to your absurd idea that the government is needed to prevent monopolies, you should know that all true cases of monopoly-pricing are government-created. The following articles may be helpful:

Fear of monopoly
The question of the cable monopoly
Understanding the Barriers to Entry
Pile on Microsoft
Media Concentration: Not a Threat
Break up Microsoft
Anti-trust, anti-truth
Cipro Shortage: An Invented Scarcity

Krugman is a Keynesian. I don't consider that to be a free-marketer. I don't really give a flip if that makes me 'far-right' or not. see: this for a pretty funny (well funny for an Austrian Economics blog) bashing of krugman, which also puts it into a light that, I believe, highlights how much information is lost projecting this onto a 'left-right' spectrum.

If someone doesn't want to reveal their genetic information to a health insurance company, then they will either have to pay a higher premium by default to cover all of the unexpected risks, or find another company. No-one has the right to get insurance from any particular company at a low rate.

Individuals who think like this obviously have a complete lack of understanding of how insurance works, as well as a complete lack of understanding of economics and praxeology. All that these laws are going to do is force people who are perfectly healthy and likely to be so all their lives to pay higher premiums, to cover for freeloaders much more susceptible to various risks.

The idea of sound insurance is pretty simple. Let's say I'm taking out a term life-insurance policy for the next 10 years. If I'm twice as likely to die in that next 10 years than another person, it makes sense that I pay twice the premium. On the free market, healthy people aren't going to go to insurance companies that charge them higher to allow unhealthy people to freeload.

actually, on the unhampered free market (in an anarcho-capitalist world), there would be .

Rothbard discusses enforcement of the court's decisions in the other chapter I mentioned, The Public Sector.

When the court reaches a decision, the private police company with which the court has a contract (or the court's marshalls) enforce the decision.

If the person ruled against disagrees, he can take the case to his own court.

If the two courts disagree on liability, then they would have to agree upon another court to function as an appeals court, which would have the final say. In this way, every court would act both as a normal court, and as an appeals court when two other courts agreed to send the matter to that court for appeals.

To take a specific example, Rothbard considers the pollution in the 1800's by smog-factories to be a tort against the property of farmers and other land-owners, whose property was defiled by the smog from the smoke-stacks. He emphasizes that companies should be completely liable for any damage they may do to other individuals property through pollution, and may be forced by the courts to either pay damages and/or reduce/eliminate their pollution. It is important to note that companies would, most likely, under a libertarian system, not only be forced to pay damages, but also to stop their tort in the future; for no damages money can undue property-violations. Rothbard also discusses how our monopolistic courts have really failed to adequately deal with tort, taking the case of pollution in particular.

Pure capitalism is the anarcho-capitalism supported by Rothbard and his followers. Under pure capitalism, there would be no intellectual property. Thus, it's likely that ideas would spread, as they would not be unhampered by Statist intervention to create an artificial shortage of supply and an artificial monopoly.

Without a legal system and enforcement mechanisms protecting private property rights then *nobody* would be able to own any property

Wrong. Please see The Public Sector. The State is the enemy of private property and all civilized human beings, not a friend.

Without a legal system and enforcement mechanisms protecting private property rights then *nobody* would be able to own any property

Wrong. Please see The Public Sector. The State is the enemy of private property and all civilized human beings, not a friend.

Without a legal system and enforcement mechanisms protecting private property rights then *nobody* would be able to own any property

Wrong. Please see The Public Sector. The State is the enemy of private property and all civilized human beings, not a friend.

Go out and read Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson available at your local bookstore. Hazlitt (back in 1946) proved that "wealth creation" is a fallacy. Jobs are never destroyed, they are merely transformed. Sure, when you look at a single person, you may see them lose their job because of new technology, but its NEVER an overnight situation. Technology provides new products and new direction for entrepreneurs to offer new careers for even more people than the old technology "provided" for.

It is time to stop thinking of labor as production -- it is merely another form of sellable good. Supply and demand dictate whether or not a worker is needed, and "wealth" is just a useless term used to explain stored equity that was gained from past demand for your the goods which you have previously sold.

If you haven't read Hazlitt's book, you should. It'll actually explain in simple, understandable English why all the economists of yesterday and today are generally wrong, and why the "Austrian" School is very right.

If you confine yourself to stricly advocating gradual and "practical" changes, it is very easy to lose sight of the end goal. In the case of Libertarianism, the end goal is to eliminate all government and allow the world to operate on a completely unhampered free market; in Free Software, the goal is to "provide free software to do all of the jobs computer users want to do--and thus make proprietary software obsolete." (as someone who believes in both these goals, I should point out that they are not contradictory ends: see Kinsella's Against Intellectaul Property.

Extremism only becomes a problem when those who adhere to a certain end (e.g., Free Software for every need or the elimination of government) reject any progress towards that goal as a sellout of that goal because such progress is step-wise. This is most certainly not what RMS has done.

If you confine yourself to stricly advocating gradual and "practical" changes, it is very easy to lose sight of the end goal. In the case of Libertarianism, the end goal is to eliminate all government and allow the world to operate on a completely unhampered free market; in Free Software, the goal is to "provide free software to do all of the jobs computer users want to do--and thus make proprietary software obsolete." (as someone who believes in both these goals, I should point out that they are not contradictory ends: see Kinsella's Against Intellectaul Property.

Extremism only becomes a problem when those who adhere to a certain end (e.g., Free Software for every need or the elimination of government) reject any progress towards that goal as a sellout of that goal because such progress is step-wise. This is most certainly not what RMS has done.

That's true. In fact, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton won a Nobel prize based on work discovering just that. Essentially, he demonstrates that, contrary to traditional micro-economic theory, the behavior exhibited by actors in the economic arena is not always rational. There are other apparent motivations and descriptors of their behavior. IIRC, John Nash (aka Russel Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind") also won a Nobel Prize with similar discoveries rooted in game theory, but also had important implications for whether or not rationality was the sole descriptor of the behavior of economic actors.

Interestingly, a search on Google for "John Nash Rational Actor" reveals a number of relevant articles, one of which suggests that Nash overstated his discovery's impact on economics.

It is the major alternative to traditional Macro-Econ and Marxism. Among the economists of this "school" of thought are Nobel Prize winners Freidrich Hayek and renowned economist Ludwig Von Mises. It explains all economics starting with the premise that all action occurs because people are uneasy. If they were not uneasy they would not act. People exchange act to exchange a less desirable set of circumstances for a more desirable one. What people desire is subjective but people arrange their wants in a scale choosing the most desired things and setting aside others they cannot have simultaneously. It then goes from there to develop theories of money, credit and the business cycle. They were the only ones to explain and predict the current economic malaise we are in now. A good sources for information on the Austrian School is Mises Institute.

They have a free library of online books where you can read the classics. Among some of those I recommend are :

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth which gives some very interesting arguments as to why pure central planning is impossible that have to with problems of information distribution to the planners.

Economic Science and the Austrian Method. This is a good explanation of the school and why and how its methods and understanding are different from traditional macro econ.

It is the major alternative to traditional Macro-Econ and Marxism. Among the economists of this "school" of thought are Nobel Prize winners Freidrich Hayek and renowned economist Ludwig Von Mises. It explains all economics starting with the premise that all action occurs because people are uneasy. If they were not uneasy they would not act. People exchange act to exchange a less desirable set of circumstances for a more desirable one. What people desire is subjective but people arrange their wants in a scale choosing the most desired things and setting aside others they cannot have simultaneously. It then goes from there to develop theories of money, credit and the business cycle. They were the only ones to explain and predict the current economic malaise we are in now. A good sources for information on the Austrian School is Mises Institute.

They have a free library of online books where you can read the classics. Among some of those I recommend are :

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth which gives some very interesting arguments as to why pure central planning is impossible that have to with problems of information distribution to the planners.

Economic Science and the Austrian Method. This is a good explanation of the school and why and how its methods and understanding are different from traditional macro econ.

It is the major alternative to traditional Macro-Econ and Marxism. Among the economists of this "school" of thought are Nobel Prize winners Freidrich Hayek and renowned economist Ludwig Von Mises. It explains all economics starting with the premise that all action occurs because people are uneasy. If they were not uneasy they would not act. People exchange act to exchange a less desirable set of circumstances for a more desirable one. What people desire is subjective but people arrange their wants in a scale choosing the most desired things and setting aside others they cannot have simultaneously. It then goes from there to develop theories of money, credit and the business cycle. They were the only ones to explain and predict the current economic malaise we are in now. A good sources for information on the Austrian School is Mises Institute.

They have a free library of online books where you can read the classics. Among some of those I recommend are :

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth which gives some very interesting arguments as to why pure central planning is impossible that have to with problems of information distribution to the planners.

Economic Science and the Austrian Method. This is a good explanation of the school and why and how its methods and understanding are different from traditional macro econ.

There's no reason why GNU/Linux needs protectionism from the government (in fact, in most cases, it's proprietary organizations like Microsoft that receive special government advantages, granting them monopolies and exemptions from competition). GNU/Linux is a superior product, and as MS Windows gets more and more bloated with each version, less and less secure, with less useful features added, all the while MS demanding hundreds for upgrades, the market will shift over to GNU/Linux.

There's no reason why GNU/Linux needs protectionism from the government (in fact, in most cases, it's proprietary organizations like Microsoft that receive special government advantages, granting them monopolies and exemptions from competition). GNU/Linux is a superior product, and as MS Windows gets more and more bloated with each version, less and less secure, with less useful features added, all the while MS demanding hundreds for upgrades, the market will shift over to GNU/Linux.

Like a lot of "market failures", this one has arisen because of boundary issues between private and public spheres of ownership and control.

This article from the Von Mises Institute explains it far better than I ever could.

In re: Joseph McCarthy, read "Treason", just out by Ann Coulter, as it dispells many of the myths about that time period.

See, I could spend months repeating all the extensive arguments and facts against some of the B.S. found here, but really don't have the time nor interest. I figure that if I at least give a reference to factual material widely available in book form that covers the topic, then anyone who actually wants to find out the truth will bother to read at least part of it (even if it's just from a library, or from a free public domain copy online, as in the case of the Hayek books), while I won't have wasted my time on those who really don't care anyway, at least not enough to do any actual research about the topic.

BTW, you can be excused for not having read Coulter's book, after all, it's brand new, even if it is a current #1 best seller in the U.S., but if you haven't read Hayek then you are woefully ignorant of Communism and Socialism vs. Freedom and Capitalism, his works being one of the major foundations of Austrian economics and some of the most influential books on economics ever published.

For more information, try the DMOZ/google category devoted to sites about Hayek as a good start, then hit Von Mises for good measure.

This will probably help you understand things a bit.
Government intervention, just like the mega-scandals on Enron and Worldcom of the last few years, tend to make things look really great in the short-term, but are devastating and painful in the long run. The more power you give the government, the more corruption your going to get.

You would be much better off referring people to Mises.org instead of that cartoon-presentation.

Thanks for the link to Mises.org. Very interesting read. I've read through most of the articles on the front page, and am now looking at Making Economic Sense, by Rothbard. An interesting book (and it's great that it's free online).

A lot of people here are trying to justify P2P "theft" of music on a fair-use basis and other such non-sense.

I suggest thinking a little outside the box and recognizing that IP itself is nothing but an unethical, economically harmful, government-enforced monopoly.

Read-on if you are interested: http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

"raising the general standard of living" could certainly be the result of an increased "social safety net". At the simplest, if you take some money from the richest and give it to the poorest, the average family income would be increased.

This is easy to assume, but actual data shows otherwise. As a near perfect example, one can compare Sweden and the US during the 90's and the US to other countries during the 80's. I would recommend reading: this article for illustration. It's obviously from a free market source, but the numbers are clear.

In general, taking from the rich and giving to the poor can only raise the standard of living if all other things remain constant, and only in the short term. Simply because the rich often produce that which raises the standard of living most dramatically.

As a simple example, still taken from this article's research would be the percentage of poor households in the early 1980's that were lacking an indoor flushing toilet, and a fixed shower or bath. 1.8% U.S. poor households were without flushing toilets, 2.7% of poor US households were withing fixed showers or baths. Even the United Kingdom (certainly more liberal, but not by an "unreasonable" amount some would say) has 6% of it's poor without flushing toilets and 4% lacking bathing facilities. The article demonstates a great number more.

The article sites all of it's sources, but just to make sure, my quick bit of data is taken from: Rector, Robert. "How 'Poor' Are America's Poor?" in Julian Simon ed. "The State of Humanity" (Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 240-56. Table 24.1

"raising the general standard of living" could certainly be the result of an increased "social safety net". At the simplest, if you take some money from the richest and give it to the poorest, the average family income would be increased.

This is easy to assume, but actual data shows otherwise. As a near perfect example, one can compare Sweden and the US during the 90's and the US to other countries during the 80's. I would recommend reading: this article for illustration. It's obviously from a free market source, but the numbers are clear.

In general, taking from the rich and giving to the poor can only raise the standard of living if all other things remain constant, and only in the short term. Simply because the rich often produce that which raises the standard of living most dramatically.

As a simple example, still taken from this article's research would be the percentage of poor households in the early 1980's that were lacking an indoor flushing toilet, and a fixed shower or bath. 1.8% U.S. poor households were without flushing toilets, 2.7% of poor US households were withing fixed showers or baths. Even the United Kingdom (certainly more liberal, but not by an "unreasonable" amount some would say) has 6% of it's poor without flushing toilets and 4% lacking bathing facilities. The article demonstates a great number more.

The article sites all of it's sources, but just to make sure, my quick bit of data is taken from: Rector, Robert. "How 'Poor' Are America's Poor?" in Julian Simon ed. "The State of Humanity" (Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 240-56. Table 24.1

"raising the general standard of living" could certainly be the result of an increased "social safety net". At the simplest, if you take some money from the richest and give it to the poorest, the average family income would be increased.

This is easy to assume, but actual data shows otherwise. As a near perfect example, one can compare Sweden and the US during the 90's and the US to other countries during the 80's. I would recommend reading: this article for illustration. It's obviously from a free market source, but the numbers are clear.

In general, taking from the rich and giving to the poor can only raise the standard of living if all other things remain constant, and only in the short term. Simply because the rich often produce that which raises the standard of living most dramatically.

As a simple example, still taken from this article's research would be the percentage of poor households in the early 1980's that were lacking an indoor flushing toilet, and a fixed shower or bath. 1.8% U.S. poor households were without flushing toilets, 2.7% of poor US households were withing fixed showers or baths. Even the United Kingdom (certainly more liberal, but not by an "unreasonable" amount some would say) has 6% of it's poor without flushing toilets and 4% lacking bathing facilities. The article demonstates a great number more.

The article sites all of it's sources, but just to make sure, my quick bit of data is taken from: Rector, Robert. "How 'Poor' Are America's Poor?" in Julian Simon ed. "The State of Humanity" (Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 240-56. Table 24.1

"raising the general standard of living" could certainly be the result of an increased "social safety net". At the simplest, if you take some money from the richest and give it to the poorest, the average family income would be increased.

This is easy to assume, but actual data shows otherwise. As a near perfect example, one can compare Sweden and the US during the 90's and the US to other countries during the 80's. I would recommend reading: this article for illustration. It's obviously from a free market source, but the numbers are clear.

In general, taking from the rich and giving to the poor can only raise the standard of living if all other things remain constant, and only in the short term. Simply because the rich often produce that which raises the standard of living most dramatically.

As a simple example, still taken from this article's research would be the percentage of poor households in the early 1980's that were lacking an indoor flushing toilet, and a fixed shower or bath. 1.8% U.S. poor households were without flushing toilets, 2.7% of poor US households were withing fixed showers or baths. Even the United Kingdom (certainly more liberal, but not by an "unreasonable" amount some would say) has 6% of it's poor without flushing toilets and 4% lacking bathing facilities. The article demonstates a great number more.

The article sites all of it's sources, but just to make sure, my quick bit of data is taken from: Rector, Robert. "How 'Poor' Are America's Poor?" in Julian Simon ed. "The State of Humanity" (Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p. 240-56. Table 24.1

Yes, the BSD-license allows proprietary developers to club their users over the head.

Okay, this could be entertaining. Specify exactly what is "clubbing their users over the head." Fairly vague yet threatening language so far. The use of proprietary software for the end-user is no different then that of use of GPL software, yet you describe it as clubbing them over the head.

This is why BSD-licensed software simply cannot compete with proprietary software.

Hmmm, this is why the BSDs, XFree86, WineX and others are "dead"? They simply couldn't compete with OS-X, Metro-X, and (ahem) WineX? Could you name maybe one project that "couldn't compete" becuase it was BSD?

But lets look at an underlying motive here. You're not talking about freedom anymore, your talking about control. You are assuming a bleak future for those that cannot control what others do with their product.

Lets not make up meaningless phrases here.

I'm dealing with a moron here. Even worse an arrogant moron who presumes that if he/she's never heard of it before someone is making it up.

Socialism means

Hmmm, you even seem to have a rather simplistic idea of what socialism is. Its far off enough to warrant suspicion of you creating straw-men, but in this case I think you never learned any more then you highschool teacher told you. I know better and I'm not even a socialist.

Please turn off your FUD-machine:

What FUD are you talking about? It even restricts output it considers a "a work based on the Program". But even as it is, an end user has no more access to the program then someone that has legally purchased a proprietary program. The GPL guarantees nothing more to the end user then a EULA. (Wait, that did sound like deja vu. I did mention that before.)

Well at least you admitted it when you said "The FSF specifically chose not to enumerate end-user rights".

The FSF and FS advocates are not concerned with getting something for free.

Nope, they are not really interested in the end-user or downstream developers freedom at all.

Why is it that any time an individual has firm beliefs, (s)he's accused of being a zealot?

No its not that you have firm beliefs that make you a zealot, its your blind worship and misinformed stance *and* militant defence of it that makes me suspect you are a zealot.

Simply because I agree with RMS on a few issues does not mean I worship him.

This coming from the person who opened up their responce to me with, "Oh please. When you're done worshiping worshipping Linux Torvalds, please call us so that we can actually engage in an intelligent discussion." What a hypocrite.

I can't let this go by without a challenge.

You are wrong from an intellectual, philosophical, and historical viewpoint.

Might I suggest that in the future if you wish to expand on a subject, that you do your own reading and research, rather than rely on the definitions the latest demagogues and politicians wish to pour into you?

If you say you don't want a mansion, you're a liar. It's called the American Dream.

Not everyone's dreams are limited to the "bling-bling" sets of a "YO! MTV Raps" video dude.

I'm sorry, but you, as a unique individual, don't have the slightest right to decide what's best for other unique individuals. Nor does any other individual or group, including government. By definition, only an individual can decide what's right and what's wrong for an individual.

To charge a unique, thinking individual with "making the wrong market decision" is not only arrogant, but incredibly ignorant.

Go read an economics textbook.

Whose textbook? Try mises.org if you still don't understand my perspective.

Then take a gander at this: The Return of Stagflation. The signs are there, especially the general cluelessness & helplessness of the financial kingpins.

I've read so many economic fallacies that many /.'ers take as fact. "Government can offer stimulus to the economy" is one (fact: government only takes, rarely provides). "U.S. Businesses" are another -- many U.S. corporations are owned by off shore investors. How does any of this actually affect ME?

I'm a big fan of The Mises Institute which offers articles about the Austrian School of Economic Theory -- categorically disproving many of the myths about the economy today.

Mike Tarsala could learn a lot from these guys...